Monday, February 3, 2014

Happy 10th Birthday Facebook: Know What Facebook Achieved Within These 10 Years

Started on Feb 04, 2004 Facebook has completed its 10 years. So, in occasion of Facebook 10th Birthday, we wish Happy Birthday Facebook :D . From nearly 10 years, Facebook has been on a mission to connect the world and we all know, it has achieved the mission up to a big extent. Now, Facebook population is going to cross China’s population.




It has become incredibly popular among people. Even a small kid knows Facebook. Although, the idea of starting Facebook was innovative and powerful which helped Facebook to grow popular but it is not the only thing which helped this great social network to achieve the height of success where Facebook is now.
From starting, Facebook has done very impressive task to understand their users, their requirements and expectations from the social network. They have done several major/minor updates and introduced many new features too. Some of them failed and some grew very popular.
For example: Facebook timelines which are though liked by many users but there are still millions of users who don’t want Facebook Timeline and more comfortable with Facebook Walls. So, while taking care of them we have introduced the tutorial to on “How To Remove Facebook Timeline in 2014?

Anyways, as like us, if you too love Facebook then on the occassion of Facebook 10th Birthday, you might be curious to know what the social network have achieved within these 10 years. So, we are showcasing interesting infographics from dPFoc Canadatelling what Facebook has achieved within these 10 years.
The infographics tells you all major updates that Facebook did in a Facebook Timeline style. After this the infographics shows how Facebook looked like, when it was started in 2004 as TheFacebook. You will also get rough statistics about Facebook users by country, its monthly visitors, pageviews, minutes spend, number of fake accounts etc. Finally, the infographics shows Facebook vs. Twitter stats and estimated revenue till now, starting from 2004.

Saturday, February 1, 2014

11 Reasons Link Building Is A Futile Waste Of Time — And One Big Reason It Isn’t

I don’t have to build links anymore, and I have never felt so liberated. So free. All the years I spent endless hours trying to help content get discovered — and I didn’t realize I didn’t have to do any of it. Those 163 conference gigs? Waste of time. 300+ articles, columns and posts? Digital litter. The massive project I just wrapped up for the Sochi Olympics? I’m sending their check back.
Why? Because it’s been made clear by everyone that link building is now dead, the last nail in the coffin being the guest blog post, hammered in by my friend, colleague, and occasional co-panelist, Matt Cutts, who takes way more grief than he deserves. It’s not his fault you treated Google like a personal ATM for a decade.railroad_link
So there it is. Stop all your linking and publicity related activities. You now have one single solitary content mission:
Be awesome.
Be awesome and the world will find and share that awesomeness — this is the 2014 social version of 1994′s “build it and they will come” approach, or the 2010 version of “just make it an app and they will download it.” Who needs links when likes, tweets, pins and plusses are available? An actual <a href> tag is downright exhausting to create and could get us an unnatural link warning.
Somehow, someway, the web has evolved into this absolutely amazing collection of utterly brilliant content that builds its own links or downloads itself onto your handheld. And to prove that link builders (or linking strategists, or content publicists or whatever we called ourselves) are no longer needed, below are 11 facts that truly illustrate the linkless world we now live in.
1. There are over 5,300 articles that have the words “link building is dead” in their title. See for yourself: http://goo.gl/YatQDI. There is no possible way they can all be wrong — at least one out of 5,300 has to have some truth to it, am I right?
2. Directories Don’t Work. (Not true. Directories with no actual purpose don’t work. Topical, vertical, niche, and highly curated directories are a solid source of traffic and credibility.)
3. Press Releases Don’t Work. (Not true. Press releases about nothing and filled with keyword anchors don’t work. Press releases about something that is actually worth announcing might just get you written about [and linked to] by someone that has credibility. Big difference.)
4. Article Databases Don’t Work. (Not true. Article databases filled with poorly written content covering hundreds of topics don’t work. Much like directories, topical, vertical, niche and highly-curated collections of articles are a solid source of traffic and credibility.)
5. Anchor Text Doesn’t Work. (Not true. If the website that contains the anchor text has produced historical signals that indicate it has been a highly credible source for a long time, then anchor text originating from that source is likely to be quite helpful — and you won’t be able to control it because that’s what made it credible in the first place. Imagine for a moment there’s a college professor who has been blogging about global warming for a decade. He’s an expert. He can’t be bought. He sometimes links to other sources and sites, and he sometimes even uses text that contains what you might call a “keyword.”  He has never heard of SEO in his life. Do you really think Google is going to ignore that source?)
6. Link Networks Don’t Work. (Not true. It all depends on how you are defining the term “link network.” Isn’t a nationwide collection of state chapter websites of any national organization a link network? Yes, it is. And if you are a new chapter of that national organization, launch a site, and get your link like all the others have, aren’t you now a part of a link network? Yes, you are — as you should be.)
7. Widgets Don’t Work. (Not true. Widgets that embed and/or require inclusion of source code containing links don’t work. Not all widgets are like this.)
8. Paid Links Will Get You Busted. (Not true. Nothing more to say on this one.)
9. Guest Posts Don’t Work. (Not true. Isn’t this column technically a “guest post”? Aren’t you reading it right now?)
10. Infographics Don’t Work(Not true. Have we reached the point where every single complex, statistic-driven fact and finding has now been made perfectly clear by infographic artists? No. But we have reached the point where 7,500 charts showing why e-cigarettes are good for you is not helpful.)
11. The exact same companies that you paid thousands of dollars to build links for you are now charging you thousands of dollars to remove the exact same links they so fervently urged you to pursue. (In many cases true, sadly.)
All of what you’ve read so far is both true and false at the same time. How does that help to clear up matters?  In today’s linking environment, everything is a matter of nuance. Everything works and nothing works, depending on a variety of variables and intentions.
For every tactic you tell me is good, I can show you how it could be bad. For every tactic you tell me is wrong, I can find a scenario where it could be right. And this isn’t news.  It’s always been this way. There has never been a shortage of link builders, but there has always been a shortage of content linking strategists who recognize search is just one piece of the linking puzzle and know what to do about it.

The Right Content, The Right Person, The Right Introduction

Now, below is one reason link building is not dead. Buried deep on a new Sochi Olympics website is content just for teachers. You’d probably never know it was there or find it if you just used the massive navigation menus on the site, so I was asked to help.
If link building is not needed, if link building is dead, if link building does not work, then the person who sent me the below email in response my outreach/link request apparently did not get the news.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: New Sochi Olympics Educational Content 
Available for Teachers
Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2014 14:56:14 -0000
From: (redacted) School District
To: Eric Ward <eric@ericward.com>
Mr Ward,

Thank you for alerting us to the instructional materials 
and lesson plans for the upcoming Olympics. We have shared 
the URLs with the 500+ teachers in our district by putting 
direct links to the materials in our weekly e-mail, and 
will include them again next week.
Thank you for contacting the (redacted) 
School District.
(name redacted)
Director of Communications & Development
(redacted) School District
(email redacted)
(phone redacted)
Wow, telling someone about content and they actually link to it? It can’t be, but there it is. Please ignore this column and accept my apologies. I have to get back to work after all.

Source: http://selnd.com/1aIDTXN

Friday, January 31, 2014

Should I Build Links Using Article Directories?

Matt Cutts, Google’s head of search spam, posted a video answer encouraging webmasters not to use article directory web sites with the goal of building links.
The question posed was:
Links from relevant content in article directories — Seen as good or bad? eg. I link my beauty website from a cosmetic surgery article on say, Ezine? Would you do that?
Matt Cutts responded in short said that his personal recommendation is to not upload articles to article directories.
Matt also tweeted his answer to the question, saying “No.”
Source: http://selnd.com/1hOJr1v

Thursday, January 30, 2014

How To Find High PR Do Follow Blog Commenting Sites

http://www.iftiseo.com/2014/01/trick-to-get-high-quality-backlinks.html

How To Do Spam Free Blog Commenting For Backlinks

Blog commenting can be a pain if not done with care.Google is very strict with blog commenting guild lines.Points below will prepare you to get bet backlinks from blog commenting.



  1. Always use niche based blogs
  2. Use original profile pics while commenting(Use gravatar)
  3. Use original and discussion related comments
  4. Always use your personal name while commenting,dont use keywords
  5. Never use works like "Thank you","you are best" ,"good" etc.the comments should have a valuable meaning as per the on going discussion of the page.
  6. Dont use naked url in comments.
  7. Never insert Anchored texts in the comments.
  8. Always comment on Good PR blogs.
  9. Try to comment on blogs with DA and PA above 30+
  10. Try to write minimum 100 words comments and always address the author/admin.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

How to Master Google+ Local Optimization in 2.5 Minutes

Want to be the master of your Google+ Local in your market?

Follow these simple tips to optimize your listing in just 2.5 minutes!


  1. Use a local phone number - not an 800 number.
  2. Add a website URL
  3. Check your Google pin
  4. Add pictures


Tuesday, January 7, 2014

55 Page Rank Factors for SEO

There are more than 250+ factors which are used to consider for Page Rank.I am mentioning some of the few here which you should consider and some not to consider while optimizing your website:
  1. Keywords in title tag
  2. Keywords in URL
  3. Keyword density in document text
  4. Keywords in anchor text
  5. Keywords in headings (H1, H2, etc. tags)
  6. Keywords in the beginning of a document
  7. Keywords in alt tags
  8. Keywords in metatags
  9. Keyword proximity
  10. Keyword phrases
  11. Secondary keywords
  12. Keyword stemming
  13. Use of Synonyms
  14. Keyword Mistypes
  15. Keyword dilution
  16. Keyword stuffing
  17. Anchor text of inbound links
  18. Origin of inbound links
  19. Links from similar sites
  20. Links from .edu and .gov sites
  21. Number of Quality backlinks
  22. Anchor text of internal links
  23. Keywords Around-the-anchor text
  24. Age of inbound links
  25. Links from directories
  26. Named anchors
  27. IP address of inbound link
  28. Inbound links from link farms and other suspicious sites
  29. Many outgoing links
  30. Excessive linking, link spamming
  31. Outbound links to link farms and other suspicious sites
  32. Cross-linking (reciprocal link building)
  33. Description metatag
  34. Keywords metatag
  35. Unique content
  36. Frequency of content change
  37. Keywords font size
  38. Age of document
  39. File size
  40. Poor coding and design
  41. Illegal Content
  42. Invisible text
  43. Cloaking
  44. Doorway pages
  45. Duplicate content
  46. Use of tables,Frames
  47. A Flash home page
  48. Site Accessibility
  49. Sitemap
  50. Hosting downtime
  51. Redirects (301 and 302)
  52. Bans in robots.txt
  53. URL length
  54. File Location on Site
  55. Use of Top-level domains (TLDs)

How To Reduce Bounce Rate of Your Website

Ways to Reduce Bounce Rate Dramatically:



Bounce Rate


  1. Speed Up Your Blog: Decreasing the load times helps reducing your bounce rate.
  2. Attractive Design: It helps visitors to be interactive and navigate pages with ease.
  3. Creating Sneeze Pages: Popular post,recommended articles,Sharing Buttons:etc.
  4. Images: Use light images which loads fast,avoid flash.
  5. Write creative and catchy Headlines
  6. Inter Linking: Its make more appealing for visitors to click the links and navigate other pages.
  7. Mobile Friendly: Creating mobile friendly webpages,helps mobile traffic use website with ease.Install a Responsive Theme
  8. Ads Placement: Dont stuff webpage with Advertisements,too much use of JavaScript can hamper your page load time.
  9. Avoid Keyword Stuffing: Its annoying for visitors and can quite your webpage as it lowers the quality of your article.
  10. Avoid in stream videos,its slows your page load time on buffer.

Monday, January 6, 2014

Image Optimization: The Low Hanging Fruit in SEO

Visual media rules the web right now. Images are the most shared item on Facebook, and of course Pinterest and Instagram. When images from your website are shared on those sites it can drive more visitors back to your site.

The images on your site can also bring potential traffic to your site from Google Searches.  I know from checking Google Analytics, there are a lot of search queries from image search.

Often times people neglect to optimize their images and as a result miss out on a lot of traffic opportunities.

This is an easy SEO win that could bring you more site visitors.

Here are a few ways to make sure your images are optimized and working for your business.

How search engines work
Google has “robots (software that ranks websites)” that check out your site.  The thing is, these robots don’t see pictures or colors etc…  they only see text.  So they don’t see your pictures, but they do see the name of the pictures.

Adding Titles and “Alt Text” to images can help search engines associate images with text.

ALT Tags
In terms of SEO, ALT tags are the most important. Use keywords here that are related to the content on your page, and don’t stuff with too many keywords, especially irrelevant ones. In general, try and stick to one keyword, two at most per image.

Title
Use keywords in the title as well. Rather than IMG38723987123.jpg use a name like senior-portrait-session-ideas.jpg

If you hover over any of the images on this site, you can see the Alt Text.

Add a description and copyright
I recommend adding your website and copyright info to your images as well. When Google finds multiple copies of the same image it uses many different signals to identify the source of the image. I set up a metadata template in Photoshop Bridge to automatically apply this information to all of my images.

How to automatically optimize images

If you are using WordPress, the Title, Alt Text, Descriptions and Captions can all be added in the media editor. You can also save time by using an SEO Image plugin, which will automatically optimize all of your images with alt text and titles. If you are a Hi-Fi Ready-Made site owner, this has already been added for you.

File Size
File size is important because it affects page loading times. Google factors in page loading times in ranking. If you host with ZippyKid, image optimization is a built in server feature.

Open Graph Tags
Open Graph tags are great because they let you specify which images are used when your content is shared on social media. It does not impact SEO however it allows you to control your brand message and how your content is shared.

Flash
If you’re using a Flash site, optimizing your images will not make a difference since the search engines cannot “see” the page content.

What to do next
Go check your Google Analytics account and find the 10-20 top pages/blog posts bringing in search traffic. In Google Analytics look under Traffic > Search Engine Optimization > Landing Pages.

Go to those pages and add Titles and ALT Text to the images. Make sure to use a relevant keyword or keyword phrase. It can take a little while for those images to start ranking or displaying in the search engine results, however when they do it can be a great source of additional traffic.

Here is an SEO Image Optimization cheat sheet for you to grab and keep handy for reference.



Friday, December 27, 2013

SEO Christmas song - Jingle bells cover "Analyze Optimize"


Lyrics for the SEO Christmas song (Jinge bells cover):

Dancing through the SERPs, 
keywords are on their way. 
To the top we go, 
is were we want to stay. 
Sourcecode clean and smooth 
H1 is in its place.
Let's go longtail and begin on a new landing page

Analyze optimize, 
need I say it twice?
Spam and black-hat cloaking 
are not choices that are wise 
Analyze optimize,
what is the grand price?
Getting tons of traffic,
oh you won't believe its size

2)
You know what Santa says 
that good content is king. 
If you please your users
more traffic it will bring. 
Yes Google+ is new,
but please don't leave it blank.
Let's get social and begin improving AuthorRank.

Analyze optimize,
we just want to rise
Traffic and convertions 
reaching record-breaking heights. 
Analyze optimize,
Begin to Googlize
Soon you'll see your S-E-O 
starts to monetize

3)
Be aware of Panda
pages cannot be thin.
If you build spammy links
you'll get hit by Penquin
Fix duplicate content
although it seems complex
You may set meta-robots to nofollow, noindex

Analyze optimize
Santa never flies,
with his sleigh unless his route
with Google Maps complies
S-E-O never dies
just a kind advice
So have a merry Christmas and then start to optimize


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKml_LYrna0

Google Christmas Spam Fighting & Webmaster Support

Google representatives have been in the webmaster forums helping webmasters with their SEO and webmaster related questions all Christmas eve and day.
There are dozens of threads that Google's John Mueller has responded to both on Christmas eve and day. Plus, Google's Zineb also has been responding today.
Of course, Google's lead spam fighter, Matt Cutts reminds us on Twitter that no matter what, spam fighting never rests:

One example is that Google penalized Rap Genius last night/this morning for link schemes.
This is not uncommon, where Googlers respond and help over the weekend. We see it year, after year, year, after year, year and after year.
I am sure the spammers don't like it but some do.

Friday, December 6, 2013

December 6th 2013 PR Update: Christmas Gift From Google

Google constantly like to entertain people with their unexpected updates and launches. As for year 2013 Google page rank update, we surely lost all the hope to observe an update, and astonishingly Google started giving out a PR update immediately prior to the end of the year. On 6th December 2013, Webmasters all over the world started mentioning regarding the Page rank update.



But this seems to be a minor Page rank update from Google as i have noticed most of the websites have been demoted. Indeed its a surprise update by Google as Google spam head "Matt Cutts" had already announced on twitter that there wont be any Page rank update this year,although he hinted for a major Update might be expected before end of the year. It was most awaited Page rank ever and only second page rank update this year(earlier it was in Feb).  We can expect a major page rank update soon may be in February next year.


Wednesday, November 27, 2013

SEO Checklist: 60 Essential Checks Before Launching A Website

Launching a brand new website or publishing a new site version is typically a straight forward process given that it is well planned and well organized. Failing to take into account all the known ranking factors or failing to build an SEO-friendly website can lead to low rankings in Search Results. As a result before publishing a website, the Webmasters and the SEO professionals should validate that they are aligned with the best current practices and that they have not made important mistakes in their SEO campaigns. In this article we provide a detailed SEO checklist in which we have the most essential checks that one should make before publishing a website online.
Keyword Optimization
Having well written/optimized texts and using the right keywords right is extremely important in SEO. Make sure that before launching your website, you can give a positive answer to all the questions below:
1. Did I conductive an extensive keyword research? Did I find all the popular terms that are relevant to my industry/niche/website?
2. Did I choose the targeted keywords wisely? Have I made sure that I can compete for the selected terms?
3. Did I write unique, high quality texts that will be considered useful both by the Users and by the Search Engines? Have I performed a spelling check to all of my texts?
4. Do I have unique titles and descriptions in all the pages of the website?
5. Did I add all the important keywords in the page Titles, the Meta-Descriptions and the HTML Headings (H1-H6)? Have I optimized my texts for those keywords?
6. Are the Titles and Meta-Descriptions compelling for the users? Will they click on my page if it appears on Search Engine Results?
7. Did I use keyword combinations that are likely to be searched by users? Have I optimized my pages for those keyword combinations? Did I incorporate in the text synonyms that are likely to be used in the queries?
8. Do I have a descriptive alt text in all the images of my website?
9. Have I ensured that the content is not over-optimized, that there is no hidden text in the pages and that no Keyword Stuffing techniques are used?
10. Did I keep my pages targeted by focusing on a small number of keywords per page?
11. Have I kept the content of my pages relevant to my website’s theme? Am I sure that I have not optimized my pages for irrelevant terms?
12. Are the most important keywords of my page in the beginning of the document?
13. Did I make sure that my pages will not compete each other on SERPs and that I do not have lots of different pages optimized for exactly the same keywords?
Note that by using SEO Tools you can speed up your checks. Analyze your pages by using the Keyword Analyzer in order to ensure that your pages are targeted and optimized for your selected keywords. Additionally the SERP Analysis tool can help you analyze and evaluate the competition and see if it is possible to compete for the selected terms.
Website Development

The techniques that are used in order to develop a website are extremely important and they affect the SEO. So ask yourself the following questions and make sure you have done everything properly.
14. Is my website well coded? Is it cross-browser? Have I made sure that my pages contain no broken HTML that is likely to affect the analysis of the site?
15. Have I developed my website by using Search Engine friendly technologies? Is someone able to access my website without requiring him to use Flash, Silverlight, JavaScript/AJAX, Java applets, frames etc?
16. Is my menu visible from all the pages and is it developed in HTML so that the search engines can find the rest of the pages?
17. Is my site easy to be crawled? Do I provide text links for all the pages of my website?
18. Do I use properly the meta-robots tags?
19. Did I take steps to eliminate duplicate content by focusing on the Link Architecture, by doing 301 redirects when required and by using proper canonical tags?
20. Did I make sure that I don’t use unnecessary or incorrect HTTP redirections?
21. Do I redirect the non-www version of my website to the www version or vise versa?
22. What is the loading time of my website? Have I done everything I can to reduce it?
23. Am I certain that I do not do Cloaking and that I have no Doorway pages?
Note that you can check several of the above (HTML Validation, Meta-Robots usage, Spider View, Page Analysis etc) by using the Web SEO Analysis tool. Additionally you can check the similarity percentage between two pages by using the Duplicate Content Tool.
Link Structure, URLs and Links
In several articles in the past we have discussed how important it is to develop a solid link structure. Below we list the most essential checks that are related to the link structure, the URLs and the links:
24. Did I incorporate the important keywords in my URLs?
25. Have I ensured that my URLs are not too lengthy or too spammy?
26. Am I sure that no Session IDs (or other unnecessary variables) appear in my URLs?
27. Are my URLs static and SEO friendly (they do not include the “?” char)?
28. Do I use dashes instead of underscores in my URLs?
29. Have I ensured that I do not have too many outgoing links per page?
30. Do the anchor texts of my internal links contain important keywords? Are their text short but descriptive? Are these keywords the same with the ones that I selected during keyword optimization?
31. Do I have an optimized Link Structure? Do I use a tree-like architecture where the top level pages are the most important pages of my website?
32. Have I linked the most important pages directly from homepage or from the top categories?
33. Have I ensured that most of my PageRank/Link Juice passes to my internal pages and that there are not too many links pointing to external sites or dangling pages?
34. Have I eliminated all the links that point to different versions of the same page, causing duplicate content problems?
35. Have I eliminated all the broken links?
36. Do I use meaningful internal anchors when necessary?
37. Am I 100% sure that I do not have any hidden, spammy or paid links in my site?
38. Do I usually use text links instead of image links, when I point to an internal page?
39. Have I nofollowed the links that I do not trust? Have I decided on whether I will do PageRank sculpting?
In order get a detailed view of how the PageRank flows within your site and what is the link structure of your webpages, make sure you use the Link Structure Tool. It will provide you with detailed statistics and graphs along with all the data you require to evaluate your current link architecture.
Domains & Hosting

Both domain names and hosting can heavily affect the performance of your website and your SEO campaign, so make sure you check the followings:
40. Have I checked that my domain has no previous bans from search engines?
41. Does the domain name contain any useful/relevant keywords?
42. Have I selected the TLD of the domain wisely? Am I certain of why I want to use a generic or a country specific TLD?
43. Do I understand what are the benefits and the tradeoffs of using subdomains?
44. Do I know in which country my website is hosted? Am I certain that the website should be hosted in that country? (Given that the server location is a signal)
45. Is my hosting company reliable? Do they update/patch their servers regularly? Do they offer the necessary modules that will help me build an SEO Friendly Website? What is the uptime percentage? What are the loading times? How many sites are hosted under the same IP?
Off Page and other Checks
After checking your webpages you need to ensure that all the necessary files have been built, that all of the necessary accounts are created and that you are ready to go live. Check out the followings and make sure you have not forgotten any of the basics:
46. Did I create XML and/or HTML sitemaps? Have I submitted them to the search engines?
47. Have I created a robots.txt file? Do I know exactly which pages I have to block? Am I certain that I want to block those pages?
48. Have I created an account on Google, Bing and Yahoo Webmaster Tools? (Yes you should still use Yahoo tools until they are fully integrated with Bing).
49. Have I created a Google Analytics account (or use a similar Web Analytics service)? Have I added the tracking code in all the pages of my website? Am I sure? Am I 100% sure? ;)
50. Have I set up an RSS feed (mainly for blogs and news websites)? Do I use the RSS autodiscovery technique? Have I added the RSS URL on the HTML Header of my pages?
51. Do I understand what are the benefits and the tradeoffs of using Geo location? Have I decided on whether I should use it on my website?
52. Have I evaluated the design on my website? Have I set up the call to actions?
53. Have I setup the scripts to monitor user’s activity?
54. Have I decided on whether I will do A/B testing?
55. Have I developed a solid Link Building strategy? Have I gathered all the relevant high traffic directories of my industry and the search engine’s local listings where I can submit my business? Do I know which websites link to my competitors? Do I have a plan on how to acquire high quality links?
56. Have I decided on whether I should use Social Media to promote my brand? Have I developed a solid Social Media strategy? Did I add the social media buttons in my website? Have I created the profiles?
57. Have I tested my website by using the Web SEO Analytics Toolbox? How can I improve the site based on the SEO reports?
58. Am I positive that I use no blackhat techniques and that I do not violate Google ‘s Guidelines?
59. Have I created the Email accounts, the FTP accounts etc? Have I set up everything?
60. Have I tested thoroughly my website? Am I ready to go live?
I strongly believe that if you complete all of the checks that are described above and if you use this SEO checklist you will be able to detect most of the flaws that can damage your SEO campaign. I wish you the best of luck and I am looking forward to your suggestions and comments.