How To 301 Redirect From Non-WWW to WWW using .htaccess

If you are a blogger or a developer who mostly works on blogs, websites, you will definitely have faced this situation to have the website with www prefix to your domain.

There's no official proof that having www prefixed to the domain has any improved SEO effects, yet I have seen most of the websites to have www domains compared to non-www domain.

Here's this post that will help you do a 301 Redirect from non-www to www domain using .htaccess file.

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com$ [NC] 
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

The above snippet of code will do a 301 redirection of the non-www url to www url.

Note : Replace example.com with your domain name

Another way is to have a generic htaccess snippet of code to redirect the url from non-www to www.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

This piece of code will take up any domain url that's non-www and redirect to www domain.

Add either of the above code snippet to your website's .htaccess file

HTTPS urls can be redirected in the same way as above by replacing the http to https.

Let me know in the comments, if the above code snippet worked for you.

Pic Credit. : Unsplash

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How to Upload ads.txt file to Blogger - Adsense

This post is going to help people who have Adsense enabled to their blog and are using Blogger Platform for Blogging.

I was recently browsing through my Adsense account after some period of time and I could find an alert notification that's here in the picture below.

I updated the ads.txt to this blog as I'm running this blog under Blogger since 2013. I thought this would be a useful post for fellow bloggers who would search on how to upload the ads.txt to their Blogger platform domain.

So, here's how it is done.

Step 1 : 

Login to your Adsense Platform and click on "Download" to download the ads.txt file for your domain. You will see a one liner text in the file with the Publisher ID.

Step 2: 

Login to your Blogger Platform. Go to Settings >> Search Preferences

Step 3: 

You should see "Monetisation" at the bottom end of the Search Preferences. Now, here Custom ads.txt would be disabled. Click on "Edit"

Step 4 :

After you clicked on the Edit Link, you should copy paste the content from the ads.txt file and click on "Save Changes".

Step 5: 

Now is the time to verify if the changes are present. You should be able to verify this by going to your blog root domain in a new tab and enter /ads.txt.

https://www.example.com/ads.txt

This will show you the ads.txt content that you have updated in the Blogger.

As it is mentioned in the Adsense Alert Message, it might take a few days to see the updated changes in your Adsense Account. Be Patient and keep Blogging.

Let me know in the comments if this worked for you. Happy Blogging.

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How To Optimize Images with WebP Format

Do you own a website ? If you have a website, or any business that is running online, or even a blog for that matter, you should make sure the site runs fast and the users can access it without any waste of time. 

Load time of a web page matters in the online business., Lets say you have a great website with colorful images, and really nice design and rich use of JS animations. It'd take hell amount of time to load the page and the user who's trying to visit your website, gets annoyed by the time that it takes to load and it'll lead you to a heavier bounce rate which will kill your blog/website rating at any time.

I was just surfing the web recently and I found something called "webp" format which is a modern image format with the tagline "lossless and lossy compression" for images on the web. I couldn't help but write about it in my blog here.

It's been said that WebP images are 26% smaller in size when compared to PNG images.

You can read more about how webp works here

WebP format is natively supported in Chrome, Opera browsers.,

In this post, we'll tell you how to use webp format to optimize the images for your website/blog in the following steps.

Step 1: 

I'm guessing you've followed the google webp link to know a bit about the format. Now, lets download the precompiled version of the tool that we'll use to convert any image to webp format with lossless and lossy compression.

Download the precompiled version of the tool here

Choose your platform - Windows, Linux or Mac OS and download the files.

Step 2 :

Extract the zip/tar file, copy and place it anywhere you feel convenient. In my case, I'd place it in my C drive.

So, now the path of the files in my system would be "C:\libwebp-0.5.0-windows-x86" 

Step 3 :

Once that is done, go inside that folder "libwebp-0.5.0-windows-x86" in your drive that you've copied it to.

Now, lets copy an image that you want to compress and check if its actually working. Copy a bit bigger sized image and place it inside "bin" folder which would be like below

"C:\libwebp-0.5.0-windows-x86\bin\image-to-be-compressed.png"

Step 4 : 

This is a bit trickier part yet you can do it even if you're not any sort of developer, or just someone who knows to operate basics of command prompt.

Open your command prompt and navigate to the installed folder. Check out the screenshot that is attached below to make sure you're on the right track.

Once you're inside the bin folder in your command prompt, run the following line

"cwebp yourfilename.JPG -o webpfile.webp"

If you've done that correctly, you'd see the below screen.

Now if you check the size of the image that's been created, you'd be amazed of how much smaller the image size you get out of it without losing its pixel sizes and quality.

There's a reason why the webp format is being said to be "lossless and lossy" . You can even convert back from webp format to any other format such as PNG, JPG etc, with "dwebp" command. 

Checkout the parameters that you can use with "cwebp" command - cwebp command

Checkout the parameters that you can use with "dwebp" command - dwebp command

That's it. you can do the image compression with just one command without using any photoshop tool.

P.S - Do comment below to let us know how did it go or even if you get stuck somewhere.,

Photo Credit : Flickr

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4 Tips For Choosing a Blog Niche

Blogging is a platform where you help people know things that you knew once and thought to share with others. Blogs are preferred to share the tiny details of your experiences and studies which are someday gonna help someone who'd be reading it. Most people don't realize what they want to blog about but they do want to write about something which they're not sure what it is yet.

I was referring to me especially who want to write-up something but couldn't exactly figure out sooner enough to start with.

This blog post is for those people who are like me who wanted /wants to write /share things whatever it might be yet isn't sure about it.

I''m gonna disclose some 4 tips down below that could get you choose what you really want to write about and start a blogging career sooner.

What Do You Know More About Anything?

Yep. That's a question that you gotta ask yourself first time when you choose you want to start a blog. 

Do you know that there are a lot of people in the world who needs to know about the one thing that you're good at and you know more than anything?

Yeah, that's true. You should be sure about what you know clear and good enough.

That's it. That will lead your mind to choose the niche you want to blog about.

Let Yourself Write For People :

Most people who choose a niche and start a blog will get it wrong the first time. Choosing to write expecting something back will always get yourself stuck into the runway.

Write a blog for yourself, and the people that are gonna read it. Let it be useful for the one's who actually admire the way as you are. Consider writing a blog as if you're keeping an online note of everything that you've learned and getting good at.

Writing for money can still get you score but that won't give you the flow and the interest as always. Yet if you find a niche that makes you money and keeps you interested every single time, then that's  reward for yourself.

Long Term Posts Frequency : 

Choosing a topic to write for a blog is not that hard when you know what you're looking for.

Clear up your mind on writing a blog. Take a list of all the topics that you could possibly want to write about. Make it an xls/ csv file if you want to. 

Now lets filter the topics that you think you can write for a long term frequently. You'd have filtered already and you're left with a little of something around 4 or 5 niche topics at last.

From there its not that for you to choose because you'd already made up your mind with some topic which is more convenient for you in delivering quality content to the readers.

Choose the One That Interests You : 

Interest is the main aspect in doing anything that you do in your day to day life. Interest is the one thing that keeps you doing the same thing everyday even at times when you think that's not worth doing.

Choose a topic that keeps you interested in writing for a very long time. Time is a constraint when you start blogging on a specific topic and you wouldn't know when you'd run out of topics. So, its always the best to choose a topic that you're so much interested as much that you're willing to write even when you find it very hard to continue the course.

Conclusion : 

Blogging is not just a money making platform for all who cares to start writing a blog. It could be a space where you share your skills and knowledge for the people who are in need of and also could become an identity of yourself in the online world.

So, concluding this, my one cent would be choosing a niche that you're good at or choosing a niche that you'd wanna be good at some point in future. Those are the two niche types that will keep you grow yourself and make you see yourself as a blooming blogger over the long run.

Also Read : 3 Things to Know Before Starting a Blog

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6 Best Things Of Being a Blogger

Being able to write what we like and have a certain (limited or unlimited) amount of people that read and follow us for updates would sure make anyone feel awesome about it. It is the key source that induces to write better than you can with more accuracy.

Being a blogger can make you feel the way that you want to be in terms of what you write.

I've been writing this blog for nearly a couple of years and it takes real pleasure to write about what I want to. Most of the posts that I write here are related to Twitter tips, and a bit of blogging tips as well with a little option of SEO. And I've been getting pretty good responses based on the topics that I write which makes me to write even more posts related to the niche that I've chosen.

This post is completely about my experiences of being a blogger for this amount of time.

Here we go with the 10 Things that I feel great about being a blogger.

Independence Day :

The sub title seems a little bit strange, don't you think? ;)

The day I started to write this blog. I got the independence to write what just want and when I want to. Very often that just felt bad of not giving up what I learn everyday.

I was too narrow in choosing what to write and all of a sudden I wanted to write about something that I wanted to learn and with flow to the learning phase I'd write the posts then and there. That was the plan.

That made me to choose this niche and start collecting informations and started writing. And with that I got the independence to write about the things that I learn often.

Learning Curve :

I was really excited about writing on what I wanted to know.

Learning about SEO, reading blogging tips wanted me to write about it so that I could talk to pose with my ideas and views.

Connections :

Obviously, you should know the "Big Fish in the Pond".

Being a blogger, You obviously would get to know your fellow bloggers. Fellow bloggers who blog on the same domain, or different niches, start following then on Twitter, Facebook, G+, and other popular social media's so that you could get their updates soon and sometimes might get a chance to talk to them, discuss a little business ;)

Talking to like minded people helps a lot, the same way you could share your views with your fellow bloggers and understand their views .

Joining forums that teach/preach or actually discuss your niche, and interacting with other bloggers makes your learning curve speed up the graph.

Participating in IRC chats , Twitter interactions helps in this matters as well.

Accuracy :

Being a blogger taught me accuracy which is highly important for any blogger to have.

Anything and everything that a blogger writes should be accurate and relevant to topic. Before writing a post, I used to collect data from various sources that are legitimate and then start writing on my own blog.

Accuracy is the point anywhere that you should be having to write on a topic which should make the post a legit one.

Stay with the Trend :

Being a blogger means staying updated with the latest trends every single time. Whether it is SEO, social media, public news, tech or anything, you get updated all the time with the current trends.

At times, There can be running out of time, but never there's running out of knowledge of latest trending news June being a blogger.

I think you'll agree with me on this point.

The simple logic behind is that you do research before you start writing a topic. And that makes you get updated in your niche from time to time.

Business Opportunities :

Being blogger opens you a number of business opportunities on the road.

You're a blogger today and you just might become an entrepreneur tomorrow gather in your own followers and release something big that attracts a large amount of people online.

You'll never run out of ideas once you're onto blogging. If you're being an excellent writer in your own niche, chances are you'd see yourself blogging on some of the too blogs as well.

Conclusion :

The above things are completely based on my experience and I wanted to write about it as it 'll reach people who feel the same way.

I should say even this post is written to communicate with people anytime.

Now that I've shared my views it'd be awesome if you share your views in this posts via comments.

Photo Credit : Flickr

Friv 10 online games

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How To Set Up Custom Domain in Blogger

Adding a custom domain to a blog is not at all a tough task to do if you've done already. You can add your custom domain to your blogger blog just by adding the domain that you purchased from Godaddy or any domain providers.

I purchased a domain today which is the current domain techlanes.com and I wanted to change my blogspot blogger to the custom domain which I did successfully.

I just found it quite easy though since I have already done with my another blog codedsack.com . I was wondering if I could write it in a blog post which would help other blogspot bloggers to run their blog with a custom domain name.

Those who don't know where to buy a domain so cheap , I would recommend you to use Godaddy.

First of all, when you buy a domain from Godaddy, you'll be provided the godaddy domain set up option once you login.

Now, we are going to add the custom domain to our blogger blog.

Step 1:   Reach out to the Settings -> Basic in your blogger and you'll find Blog Address under Publishing. 

Step 2: Now click on the Add a Custom Domain . You have to type in the custom domain that you purchased from Godaddy.

The main point to note here is that you when you type your custom domain, add prefix www to it.

For example : http://www.yourdomainname.com

It will now show two fields such as Name, Label or Host field and  Destination, Targets, and Points to field.

Step 3:  Now login to your godaddy account and launch your domain to edit the DNS zone file.

Before you'll have one A host and now you've to add the below IP Addresses below.

216.239.32.21

216.239.34.21

216.239.36.21

216.239.38.21

After adding the IP Addresses, you've to add the Host  and the target (Points To) field in the CNAME section.

That's it. You're done with your DNS Zone file in your Godaddy Account.

Step 5: Now Add the domain to your blogger blog.

While adding make sure you type www infront of the domain name and then click on the checkbox to redirect naked domain (yourdomainname.com) to regular domain (www.yourdomainname.com)

Hope that I explained it well for you to set up a custom domain to your blogger blog.

Image Credit: Wikipedia

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5 Tips for Making Your Posts Really Speak to Readers

Writing punchy, engaging, and informative content is crucial to keeping your readers interested and coming back for more, but never under estimate the power of imagery to act as a secondary bit of flair when it comes to publishing online. From simple photographs to highly detailed infographics, throwing a bit of visual stimulation in with your words can make the difference between holding onto a fickle web surfer's attention or losing them as a member of your audience forever.
Unfortunately, while most of us are hipped to the fact that illustrations within blog posts are more or less required, far fewer of us do that fact justice. Helping you with that point and a few others, here are five tips for making your posts really speak to readers:

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6 SEO Tips To Improve Your Blog Traffic

Blogging can be fun when your hardwork pays off. Its not those old times that you've to do all the work by yourself and wait for the result. Its the time that you automate everything on the handes of plugins and softwares and then wait for the result. Its all made easy with the technologies and it is what we call as SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

If you play smart by knowing what the search engines want and react to it efficiently, you might see your blog gaining more traffic on the way of blogging.

Search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo etc., and its search algorithms work efficiently based on the blog's performance and its content. Google's search algorithm Penguin 2.0 filters fresh and updated content to the top searches and avoids spammy keywords. A lot has been changed since the rolling out of Penguin update.

Here are some 6 SEO tips to improve your blog traffic.

Fresh and Updated Content:

If you have been searching every other blogs that write about the tips for improving blog traffic, you might be familiar with the sentence 'Content is King'. I found a beautiful infographics about 'Content is King' on visual.ly which explains everything . This is the first tip that every blogger will give for other bloggers. Yes, Offcourse Content is King. Currently considering the update of Google's search algorithm at the end of may this year (2013) , you might have had spam changes with the traffic in your blog rankings and page views. It is mainly because of the freshness of the blog and its frequent updation of the pages.

Penguin Update filters the pages that are currently updated and the latest results are shown.

Keywords Search:

Searching for the most used keywords is very easy when you've Google Webmaster, Adwords Tool. Search for keywords with the most impressions on your niche and try to use it in your posts where it suits. You can use those keywords anywhere in your blog. Also keep in mind that more usage of the same keywords or keywords that doesn't suit the content are considered spammy.

Check for the keywords all by yourself via Google trends and you can find its correlation factor based on the months or years. This is neccessary to know what the readers are looking for. You're to act like one and know what keywords you will google for something that you need in your niche.

About Page and Meta Tags:

 Meta tags are real useful SEO functioned tags. Even though it is not much of a SEO technique, it draws users to click to your link or page. This is where you give your blog description and the search engine lists your blog based on the description information. Without a proper description, it is difficult for search engines to index your blog among millions of blogs.

<head><meta name="description" content="You can write your blog description here"></head>

About Page plays a substitute role for the meta tags and let the search engines index and ranks your blog among million other blogs on your niche.

Guest Blogging:

Guest blogging is a very good opportunity to lead your traffic to a new level and self-recognition in the field of blogging (your niche). Moreover, you'll find your connections grow in a mass media of like minded professionals and gather more readers to your blog and more followers to your social media profiles too.

You also need to avoid these mistakes while Guest blogging in other blogs.

Backlinking:

Backlinking is the linking back to your blog from anywhere on the internet. For example, you have a social media profile on Twitter and you add your blog to your twitter account and that makes you a  backlink from twitter to your blog. Backlinking can be achieved in many ways. 

When you guest blog on other blogs, you'll get a backlink to your blog.

Commenting on other blogs will let you add a backlink to your blog as easy as that provided you don't spam!!.

Participating in communities, forums etc., and answering questions with solutions as well as backlinking to your blog.

Social Media Presence:

Self-Promotion is the best word to put in here that explains everything that we share our blog posts via social media profiles. Social Media Presence is very important for the blog traffic. In other words for business, self-promoting can be called with respect as 'Branding'. There's no point in feeling shy or guilty of promoting your blog.

This is what we do best and this is what social medias are for. To improve your blog traffic and to get more recognition for your online business, it is necessary to keep your presence in social media and share with your followers frequently.

To make it work efficient, your blog must need atleast one social media profile in every networks. It creates a name that will automatically let people think of it as a brand. If you don't have any seperate pages on social networks for your blog, better you link your personal profiles to your blog from where you share your posts. This will increase your referral traffic to a whole new level.

 With constant sharing and live on social profiles, you will gather more followers and readers to your blog as well.

Conclusion:

Blogging will be a whole new experience if you start to make it SEO friendly. You'll experience a change in your blog traffic no matter  its referral or direct or organic. Keep in mind that you write for humans and not for search engines and at the same time you're making it SEO friendly too with proper content and strategies.

Now that I have finished this post, please leave your thoughts on this post through comments and share the love.

Image Credit: Flickr- Mark Fischer

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5 Steps to Make Great Social Content [INFOGRAPHIC]

          To Make a Great Content which is worth spending  time on reading, all you need is some time to think and gather content for your ideas. You need to be relevant on writing about such topic and should not go AWOL.

          I wrote about How to write Quality Content in 3 Steps last month and I just wanted to include an infographic on to my blog about creating great content in a simple way.

          I was hunting on the internet for hours  about this topic and I finally got a perfect Infographic which I literally found on Pinterest pinned by dr4ward that was originally posted on Lindon East. I really can't say more to it as this infographic tells everything that you wanna know about writing an awesome content worth reading.

Having a big idea about a topic and digging about the Internet Market for right customers and right time to post  is the key for a great content. Sharing is a different key factor where you have to do promote all the time and make use of everything you can.

Here's to you the infographic on 5 Steps to Make Great Content.

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How to create Drop Down Menu for Blogger Blog

Drop Down Menu for Blogger blogs

 

 Tired of using the default menu features of the blogger blogs? Blogger allows you to use its default menu features according to the template you are currently using. There is no default navigation menu bar in blogger. I am using Blogger for more than a year and I have also tried creating a drop down menu bar on my blog too.

When I were using the blogger earlier days for my blogs, I tried creating and implementing the drop down menu css codes. Finally, I designed a drop down menu tab for my blog. Later on, I reminded myself today that I could make a blog post out of it and also it will help other people out there too.

The above is the sample design for the menu bar.
Here is the CSS Code for your blogger drop down menu.

 <style type="text/css">  
 #vicnav {  
 background:#CC0000;  
 border-bottom: 5px solid #993300;  
 border-top: 1px solid #e14d09;  
 clear: both;  
 overflow: hidden;  
 }  
 #vicnav ul {  
 float: left;  
 width: 100%;  
 }  
 #vicnav li {  
 float: left;  
 list-style-type: none;  
 }  
 #vicnav li a {  
 background:#CC0000;  
 color: #fff;  
 display: block;  
 font-size: 14px;  
 padding: 5px 17px 5px 15px;  
 position: relative;  
 text-decoration: none;  
 }  
 #vicnav li a:hover {  
 background:#990000;  
 color: #fff;  
 }  
 #vicnav li li a {  
 background: none;  
 background-color: #9c1a03;  
 border: 1px solid #990000;  
 border-top-width: 0;  
 color: #fff;  
 font-size: 14px;  
 padding: 5px 10px;  
 position: relative;  
 text-transform: none;  
 width: 130px;  
 }  
 #vicnav li li a:hover {  
 background: none;  
 background-color: #CC0000;  
 }  
 #vicnav li ul {  
 height: auto;  
 left: -9999px;  
 margin: 0 0 0 -1px;  
 position: absolute;  
 width: 160px;  
 z-index: 9999;  
 }  
 #vicnav li:hover ul {  
 left: auto;  
 }  
 </style>  

I have also attached the HTML sample code below for the CSS so that its easy to understand.

 <body>  
 <ul id="vicnav">  
 <li ><a href="#" >Home</a></li>  
 <li ><a href="#" >Sub Menu Indicator</a>  
 <ul >  
 <li ><a href="#" >Wrap Menu 1</a></li>  
 <li ><a href="#" >Wrap Menu 2</a></li>  
 <li ><a href="#" >Wrap Menu 3</a></li>  
 </ul >  
 </li ><!--li close of Sub Menu Indicator-->  
 <li ><a href="#" >MenuTab 3</a>  
 <ul >  
 <li ><a href="#" >Wrap Menu 1</a></li>  
 <li ><a href="#" >Wrap Menu 2</a></li>  
 <li ><a href="#" >Wrap Menu 3</a></li>  
 </ul >  
 </li><!--li close of MenuTab3-->  
 <li ><a href="#" >MenuTab 4</a></li>  
 <li ><a href="#" >MenuTab 5</a></li>  
 </ul >  
 </body >  

The Above code will create a simple drop down menu with complete CSS effects.

The HTML code above needs nothing but the input link to the post or page that you want to. If you need to show the hover link or current link with different colors, you can change the color  in background: #color in any id and try it.

Let me know if you have any changes or difficulties that you find in the code or may be if any errors.

Also view our another drop down menu with circular menu lists drop down. Hope you might be interested in it as well.

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Advertise Your Business On Facebook- Sponsored Ads

     Facebook has been the most well used strategy for advertising your business. Facebook users are engaging with the Ads and the rate of engagement has grown 11% over in just 6 months. They also announced that it reached 1 billion online users just before months (start of this year 2013) . The strategy is that its user interface is highly attractive to any kind of people may be even to the ones who have just started using it. As we know, to promote our business we all would create facebook business pages where we keep on sharing updates to keep our crowd (people who have liked your page) updated on everything about the business. It might sound easy and stressless overall when you hear its all about sharing updates frequently and you may say "Well, I could do that sharing and blah blah blah". But guys, its more than just sharing. I agree sharing is an important part and it might be easy as some of us feel too, but there's something you should worry about. "The Crowd". That's what I'm talking about.

         In this post, I am going to tell you the advertising techniques that the social media freak Facebook has provided to your efficient use of marketing your business.

         You can able to create a Facebook Ad only if you have a business page. Facebook ads differ in cost as per your need.

Struggling to find the crowd?

       So, where will you find your crowd?. Going on asking your friends and followers to like your business page is a good idea. But, even it seems little dizzy when you think of the long time maneuver. You can't keep on asking the same guys that you've been asking all long. Its better to get recognized over to many people and getting more likes per day or per week. If you have a business page, you might notice your page's growth through the Facebook Insights. At the start it always feels like you haven't got into much likes per day. Some might loose the interest in sharing posts on their page because of less listeners. It takes some days to get into the market.

Know your Business Strength:

      First of all, having in mind what exactly your business is, know what needs to be put into work to make it gain more listeners. Facebook has provided the advertising of your pages on a manner as "Sponsored". This sponsored pages have the priority that stands out to other business pages in every aspect.  When you know what exactly your business needs, you'll also know how to do it. The Point of using this advertising strategy is that you may have seen on your wall where when your friends like some pages, it is shown Sponsored at the end along with the total likes or may be with a recent post from that page suggesting you should consider liking the page too. This is called Sponsored Stories and Ads on Facebook. And this functionality costs a bit low considering the advantages that you get by using it on your business page.

Is it Building an Audience?

         Is it so? Are you thinking about how to get more audience who would actually listen to what your page says? Then you gotta work on this portion of sponsored advertising where you actually do nothing much but gaining your audience. Facebook provides some of the best offers to online ads where you can concentrate on specific crowd based on Age, Gender, work place, location etc.,

Regular Ads:

Regular Ads, ie) Premium Ads are the ones that you might have seen on the right side of your facebook homepage. This is kind of letting people know that how many have liked the particular page and suggests them to like it too. Its your selection that gets displayed as the headline, text and image and also where you want them to enter into first.

Sponsored Stories:

Sponsored Stories are the ads that will help you get more audience through your friends. People will see these ads in their news feed when their friends like the particular page. It suggests the user to like it too, and the logic is that you might like it too as it is indirectly suggested by your friend. It is a best option to get discovered through your friends who have already liked your page. This mode of advertising is best suited for the new start-ups to gain more audience that would actually listen to the business. Getting discovered is one main hassle for every start-up business pages on Facebook and this ads will make it easy within a short span on its own.

Or is it Engagement?

Or do you choose Engagement with your present audience? Engaging with the people is a better one considering if you have better things to show off with like getting more likes and shares to your posts. Facebook Engagement have grown 11% in just 6 months. This means you gotta be in that list of people who use this service too. Note that your post updates should be more interesting to the crowd as much as they want to comment, shre and like your posts and always keeping in touch with your business.

Regular Ads From Page Posts:

The Regular Ads from page posts are the same as like the regular ads that we have discussed earlier and the speciality is that it displays a specific post from your page and displays on the right side of the user's facebook home. And you can select which post to be displayed whatever it may be that you want your users to see and interact with. It may be either a video, image or text anything. It is best for sharing great content, promoting a specific post or a product.

Sponsored Stories From Page Posts:

Like we discussed earlier on the sponsored stories, it displays the posts that your friends have liked on a business page. When you do use this Sponsored stories from page posts for your business page, users will be able to view the posts or status or any content that their friends have liked on your business page. It is targeted mainly on the existing friends or fans to your page and let them interact with the posts by sharing or commenting on it.
         Interaction is only possible when you have a interesting topic to talk, share about. So if you believe your business page has such interesting quality posts you could make use of the Sponsored Stories from the page posts. This option will produce a sponsored ad with the latest post and tempts the users to comment, share or like it as once they see them.

Conclusion:

          My advice is if you are just started your business and want to advertise on facebook, you should go on with the first set for Building the audience and once you're settled with a decent number on the crowd, you may try out the Engagement set of advertising options.
        Now let me know what you are targeting (Audience or Engagement) and what advertising option would you possibly choose for your business below on the comments.

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Social Bookmarking- A Time Saver Aesthetic

Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking tools are a remarkable piece of value to the internet which let us share and bookmark things right where we sit.  Social Bookmarking is a major time saver aesthetic for all of us who are running business online.  Just imagine the situation if there is no social networking and bookmarking medias.!! Well,now that's hard. We have to do everything manually promoting our business through advertisements and  campaigns, webinars etc., I am sure that Blogging will be a piece of cake, but the part next to it called as marketing will be the outta deal. The part where we have to let the internet to know the content that we have becomes a hundred men's job .

          If not for all the social networking media and its bookmarking tools, a blog would suffer a lot to come up with a high PR and traffic rather you go on advertising online and through mass medias and do campaigns. Technically, bookmarking tools brings a lot of traffic to your site than through listed in search giants such as Google, Bing etc., Speaking of traffic, recent surveys provide an analytics that more than 60% of traffic to blogs come through social bookmarking sites and social medias.

         The definition of a bookmarking tool is just a tool that helps you to pin your posts for future references. Here, a social bookmarking tool is said to be a via program that helps you to pin or share your posts to various social medias. With the introduction of these social bookmarking websites, the trend has been changing that people are searching for what they want in these social bookmarking websites and its social medias.  Pinterest with its infographic revolution, Reddit with forum kinda coolness, Twitter with their hashtags, Digg with its whole lot of awesome bookmarking service, Quora with its community services (gather and group around your community experts) are becoming the places where people prefer to show their interest to satisfy their needs.

         The relation with social media and social bookmarking  is that you can call a social networking site as a social bookmarker, but you can't say a social bookmarking tool as a social networking site. For example, We know that Twitter is a famous social networking platform, a microblogging website.  It is also considered to be a social bookmarking site. The latest Top 15 social bookmarking sites list by EbizMBA puts Twitter 1st on the list which is followed by Pinterest, Reddit and so on.

       Attention!! It will be lame not to mention one of the gaint social media here. Yes. I am pointing out the Twitter guys who made us to speak with not more than 140 characters. Twitter is a social microblogging service also a leading sharing service that light out your content to the social media. A one follow button can change everything to be knowing interest of your crowd.

        I also have to agree the fact that, my interest in writing some of the posts did come from these sites especially Twitter and Pinterest.

     Bookmarking Services:   

                   There are hundreds of thousands of bookmarking services out there that will help you keep posting live content all the time to the social environment. Even the communities like Reddit, Stumbleupon, etc., makes you promote your posts among your community readers. 

            Bit.ly is also a bookmarking tool along with the functionality of a url shortner, that allows you to share on Twitter and Facebook. There are also bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious, Stumbleupon where you share your content through the share plugin installed on your blog.

          I don't know how many of you would know Bloggers, but I believe that it is a platform where you can find most of the bloggers of your niche where they form community of mutual beneficiaries. Bloggers shares your content automatically through the RSS Feeds of your blog. 

        Coming to Pinterest, It has the most finest infographics on the internet. A picture is worth a thousand words. Here, the pictures are not only worth just words but also worth of the information one would write in a whole post. Moreover, you can use the infographics as an information for your next post. Pin the blog post on your account by creating and organizing boards. You can also follow boards on your niche. Note while pinning your pictures write the description that relates your blog post. Your description is a key value to your pin that decides whether a pinterest user to visit your post or not. Most possibly add the pinterest Pin It button on your pages that will let you share easily to the service.

Conclusion:

        I have just quoted some of the bookmarking tools that I use and I know of. There are a number of bookmarking services out there. Don't use everything like you have to. Use some of the main services that is easy and popular to catch the readers. And most of all share frequently to those services as and when ever you create a new blog post. Sharing is an effective strategy considering the Internet Marketing. Social Bookmarking is the place where you'll find yourself complete to any search queries with solutions. Make use of these stunning social bookmarking services to save time and for marketing your blog at the same time.

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How To Write Quality Content In 3 Simple Steps

 Want to write about a topic with more content, but its soon already?. You want to make an informational article with more than 800-900 words per post?. But you don't know how to write such a big article. You want to make a master piece of your writing but it seems you have no idea? Don't worry. I have a special 3 step equation for you. 

       Writing an exceptional content is not that difficult if you have some vital points to explain. You don't need to be a professional writer to write with such a beauty. Moreover, you don't need to be a literature guy who plays with words in his post. This post will help you to write a good quality content in 3 steps.

Select a favorable Topic:

First of all, you need to find a topic to blog about. The topic should be related to your niche, so that you don't need to study much for a good writing. And more than that, the topic should be more informational than a problem solving. For example, say you are a social media marketing blogger, you would find many topics to blog about that provide information which leads to 1000 words accomplishment. It you are a software coding blogger where you provide solutions, tricks etc., its rare to find topics with more content and you know why. 

 Choosing a topic that you know nothing about is a waste of time. You can write about it but you don't find it worthwhile as like your other topics that you know very well. Choose a topic that you think you're able to write more and also provide more information. Its okay to choose a topic that you don't know a thing about. But before writing  it, spend as much time as you can so that you learn the maximum and have the faith to make a better blog post on it. 

So, I guess selecting a topic is a piece of cake now.

Read More, View More:

Reading helps a lot. Even though you have the belief that you can write a quality content on a specific topic without reading any, there are so many things that you might not know about it. Read other blogs that have posted on the same or related topic. 

There are always stuffs that you may not know about a topic and when you read various resources related to your stuff, you'll be able to know the POV of the other authors (bloggers) and gather more information that help to make a quality content with more than 900-1000 words. 

 Make sure you note down important points to write and stick to the point, so that you don't go AWOL.

Create Drafts or short notes:

We read so many things a day. We don't stop by thinking that this is enough for today and let the others be tomorrow. And when time passes by, we tend to forget some of the things that we've read earlier. So, its better to have taken short notes about the topics you've interested and such that it helps in future. 

 When you want to make a post on a topic and you read other resources, take notes on the main points that you're gonna write about. Its better if you make drafts on your blogger or wordpress editor to remind yourself to use those points.

Conclusion:

These are the 3 most important steps to write a quality content.  Make sure you include all the key points to rotate your post based on it. 
Also note that after writing, check your content for grammatical errors or spelling mistakes. This is one of the most important thing to do as it evaluates whether your content is of good quality or not.
 Now that I have finished up writing this post, What are you waiting for?!.  Go and write a Quality content on your favorite topic. And post your experiences with it.

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How to Use Social Media Effectively To Promote Your Business

Social Networking sites have been on the best side for marketing your business whatever it is you are running online. You need it always to build your credibility with the online world. You may be known to the people surrounding you, but if you need to go global, you need them anyway. As of 2013, I would say more than half of the world is using  the popular social networking sites. If I have to speak personally, Twitter, Facebook and Google+ have been on the top of the lists. The Social Media provides you an exposure to the internet world as a brand, uniqueness.
If you're a blogger or any kind of business person where your crowd is based on internet, you have to use most of the social media efficiently. I am going to give you some essential tips that you should know to use the social networking sites efficiently for marketing your business.

Facebook:

Let me start with the giant networking media. Yeah., I am talking about Facebook. Facebook as based on the Alexa Rank stands 2^nd over the Internet. With an average of 600 million users a day, marketing a brand or business on facebook can go viral. Be around always. Check for how other fellow brand pages share the updates.
The first and foremost thing in marketing a page in facebook is getting more likes. And its easy if you're willing to spend some time on it. You can ask your friends and followers to like your page and share it with their friends. If you don't ask, you'll not get what you want. Any social media you're using for marketing, there needs to be a crowd to hear you out. It is invain without a crowd. Maintain a valuable decent number of  crowd on your page. Share updates frequently. Let your followers share and comment it too. If possible, conduct give-aways through your facebook page asking any questions about your brand or blog and make sure they like your page before answering the questions.
You can make use of the Facebook Insights to supervise the analytics. The secret of using Facebook as a marketing media is to make people notice and share your posts on their timeline. Ask frequent questions to see what your people need or may be ask opinions to improve your brand. Its all about letting your crowd notice that you concern their thoughts.

Twitter:

As we can see all the famous brands, blogs, smb's use twitter efficiently as a marketing media. Even though it is just 140 long characters, this micro-blogging service is more powerful than all the other services. It tempts people to visit very often. You don't need to stay online for a whole day. Just login frequently as such let your followers know you are there always with your tweets. Tweets continously. Don't stop tweeting. If you don't have any new posts or updates to tweet, you can just tweet old posts once or twice a while and make sure you're around. Tweeting quotes a while is powerful to get you more followers.Tweets are even more powerful with their #hashtags on and it is tailored according to your place of stay. You can search anything with hashtags. With proper hashtags, your tweets would reach a large number of people all over the world irrespective of the fact they follow you or not.

 Follow as many professionals on your niche as you can and let them follow you back. Twitter can be highly interactive if you take one step forward starting the conversation. Don't hesitate to start a conversation. It is when you're about to know something new on a topic. Be pleasant to everyone on twitter otherwise you'll get suspended if they block you. Make use of the automatic tools such as Buffer that helps you to tweets at times when you are not online.

Google +:

A professional series released by Google best used for marketing in all senses as a social networking media. I don't have to say more about Google +, as a Google product, it has all the priority to other social networking sites in searches. You may have noticed when you search a topic on Google, it shows some search lists with G+ profile linked to it. Yes, their search algorithm is written in a way to prioritize the list that are linked to Google+ profiles with it along with good and popular content. You need to get at the top lists when searched for a specific topic, you gotta link your G+ profile to your blog.
  Marketing on Google+ is also not a wild head-ache you should worry about. Share your posts with the public and make sure you like your post publicly. Do everything related to your blog publicly so that the people other than in your circles can see what you do professionally. There is also categories classified with keywords as like the hash tags on Twitter. While posting create categories along with it and post as public. Add people to your circles and let them add you too. Make short-term conversations as possible to connect with your people frequently.

Conclusion:

Any Social media you use for marketing your business, there are 2 most important things that you should do for the survival. 1. Gather a decent crowd. 2. Share contents as frequently as possible. If you're capable of doing the above  two things on any social networking site, then it's a piece of cake to interact with the crowd and market your business online.

Now share your ideas here so that it would help others too.

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6 Steps to Create Backlinks To Your Blog

                   

  Blogging is a fun related platform that pays you wild money. Before monetizing your blog, make sure that your blog has a decent number of visitors per day and having quite a PR value. PR value is based on the popularity of your blog among the search engines and the spontaneity of the post. Now, What is Backlinking?. Backlinking is a SEO technique that provides traffic to your blog all the time. For those who do not know what's backlinking, its not much of a technical term that you fear of reading, its a process of linking back to your own blog or its posts through social media and communities etc.,. When you link your posts or your blog in anywhere around the internet, you'll get more traffic to your blog stated them as referral sites. You could check it through your Google Analytics.

                    In this post, I am going to share you with some 6 easy ways to create backlinks to your blog that will help you increase traffic.

Guest Blogging on your Niche:

It is always necessary for a blog to be successful, it has to reach many readers. And Guest Blogging is one way to provide it. Search for famous blogs on your niche. I'm sure you'll get many blogs as well. Choose any and request for a guest post. By publishing a guest post on a popular blog will get you a backlink to your blog and also you can backlink 2-3 posts to your blog anywhere. Moreover, its just not only a backlink, its your identification as a blogger professional.

Comment on other blogs:

It is easy and do-able. But mostly when a person search for something in google and reach a page, he's not likely to comment unless having any doubts regarding the subject. So, when you comment on any blog, automatically when you enter your website's name, it becomes a backlink. The speciality of the comments is that  when a person is reading a review on their niche, they mostly focus on the comments section at last and there is a possiblity of getting clicked on your blog link as such they find any amusing comments and reply. The blog owner will also have a chance to read your blog, when you leave a comment on their post. This is kind of a mutual benefit to readers and bloggers.
Make sure you comment on the blogs that belongs to your niche. Because it will help you get readers on your community.

Participate in communities:

So far I have found, community websites like Reddit, Digg, Bloggers, StumbleUpon etc., add more traffic to your blog. Interact with the co-bloggers in the community and share your ideas along with backlinking your post url. If you do not have one till now, then its the time to create an account in the community websites and share your ideas via your blog posts. The community includes the social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc., too. Once you interact with the people in your niche area, you might get ideas on developing your skill sets too.  Any site where you can able to share your posts via backlinking is said to be referral.

Backlinking to your own Social profiles and Pages:

I assume that you have your social media profiles where you find yourself social to others.  Link the blog url to your social profiles and stay updated. If you are managing business pages on facebook, it is to be noted that always be active on it even though you are posting an old post. Also keep in mind that don't spam sharing the same post all the time. Twitter is a best place to start your link sharing as it is a vital micro-blogging service all over the world.

Link to your Own Posts:

This is an easy way and you don't need anyone's permission to do it. You can link as much as you want to but make sure your readers don't take that as a spam. You may link as many posts, but when someone visits to your blog and would think of you as a spammer. Link to posts that are related to and don't link all the way you can.

Link to Directories, Forums:

There are thousands of link directories out there to backlink your posts as similar to RSS Directories. Some of the link directories are even payable to backlink your blog posts. These are of  great SEO Value to your blog. There are also many forums where people asks questions, share their ideas. You can also log in to the forums and backlink  your posts to the solution.

Conclusion:

The SEO traffic to your blog mainly comes through backlinks. Backlinks can be of great use to your blog's traffic. To check whether you have really got any traffic through backlinks, check to your google analytics account and see to number of "Referrals" that bring traffic to your blog.
Now, Please share your other ideas to produce backlinks to your blog through the comments so that it might help us all.

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5 Guest Blogging Mistakes That You Should Avoid

             

Guest Blogging is one of the ultimate way to gain traffic to your blog and also a medium to join the community of your niche industry bloggers. When you guest post on a high PR blog, the amount of visitors visiting your guest post will also click on your backlink to your blog reading your Author Bio. Guest blogging is not only a traffic providing option but also an experience gainer and a knowledge provider in terms of your niche. You may think having a own blog, is it necessary to guest blog on other blogs? Yes!!, It is necessary to guest blog on other blogs if you're concerned about popularizing your blog name to the world. Many Bloggers will make mistakes when it comes to Guest Blogging. Not only the mistakes cost deleting their post on the blog, but also it destroys name in the blogging community. Continue Reading to avoid the  common mistakes that every blogger makes when they decide to guest blog on a popular blog.

Poor Choice of Choosing Blogs:

                        This is the first mistake that every blogger does. They want to write a Guest Post.  They target on popular blogs that they find according to the PR and the name in the blogger community. They never see on what niche they are going to blog about. Even though it not always happens because the blog owner rejects in most of the times in terms of unrelated niche. Some may accept to post. But it is not useful for you when your blog is concerned about a niche that is too different from the niche you guest blog at. For example, you blog on internet marketing strategies, then choose the blogs that are familiar to your niche. You can find blogs like Kissmetrics, Copyblogger, Problogger etc., and request for guest post with your ideas.

Poor Choice of words:

                When I quoted the heading Poor Choice of Words, I meant frequent grammatical errors and lack of words. I am not offending any of the bloggers. Simple English that any grader can understand is more than enough to write a beautiful post. And also its your duty to raincheck your posts for errors and mistakes. It is always a fact that when any visitor reads your guest post on any popular blog, they expect perfection because of the blog's name. And when they find any mistake say spelling errors, it destroys both their blog and yours. The traffic to your blog will reduce to a level that you'll will never imagine. Before sending the fair draft to the blog owners, raincheck for any grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. I'm sure that WYSIWYG editor for wordpress have spell checker. Check for the mistakes twice before sending your post. The blog owner will never have the time to check your post for errors like you do. Once the check is finished, then send it to the blog.

Greedy for Links:

           This might seem odd, but actually every blogger does it. When writing a niche post on any blog, they just include so many links that the post can't afford.  It is an irritating moment for the blog owner to delete the backlinks and proofread it again. You can add links to your blog in your Guest Post. More than 3 links to your blog in your post will always seem to be spamming as in the sense it's not a good manner to guest post on a blog. They provide you a backlink to your blog along with the Author Bio and more than that you can add 2 links to your blog anywhere in your post. It is the decent way to post to any blog on your niche.

Poor Author Bio:

             Author Bio is the only place where you can be shown as a professional in your niche. It is also one of those places where some bloggers struggle to write about them. My advice is to maintain a neat and simple Bio that would show you as a professional. Maintain the same bio in all the blogs wherever you post as a guest author. Author Bio with your social network profiles will increase your value as a blogger in the market.

Poor After Effects:

               Lets say you have done the guest post in any blog, what will you do after getting published? Sit inside your home and waiting for the traffic to come automatically? No, then that's a mistake if you do that. You should never hesitate to promote your post even it is not from your blog. It will always help you increase traffic for your blog when both the blog owner and you promote the post. When a post is promoted only by the blog owner's side, it will reach his readers and his community. When you promote your post in their blog to your community readers, it will increase your chance of getting more Guest posts proposals and also will increase your business along with the traffic.

Conclusion:

             Ultimate vision of this post is to make aware of the common mistakes most Guest Blogger does while signing up for a Guest post. Make drafts and proofread more than twice before sending it to the blog owner. And never argue with the Blog owner for more backlinks as you'll be provided more of a Professional ID through their blog that is more than enough to increase your traffic.
                 Share your views of what are all the other mistakes that you have made while Guest Blogging and how you avoided it.

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