A great thing about Google is, it gives webmasters all the help they need to get their websites into Google's index. There's a nice tool available in Google Webmaster Tools called 'Fetch as GoogleBot'. This tool, as we discussed in our SEO Tips for start-ups, can be a great help diagnosing errors and getting a website in Google's index faster. A robots.txt file is used for crawling efficiency, and preventing certain pages from being crawled etc. Sometimes though, GoogleBot might have difficulty fetching your robots.txt file. Here's a solution from Google to this problem.
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The navigation buttons or links that are displayed at the bottom of each comment section in BlogSpot blogs enable visitors to switch between new and old posts or move from one post page to another ordered by date and time. These buttons become less of use when number of comments increase too much. Normally readers do not even observe the navigation deep down and this results in loss of precious pageviews. I have always emphasized that value pageviews more than unique visitors because it is indeed pageviews that turns into revenue generating page impressions both for AdSense or any other Ad Network. You might have seen the More, Next and Previous button showing inside the top black sticky bar on MBT homepage and post pages. It is really not possible to shift a Post data item to any other widget section in blogger. Doing such results in "Data variable not found in dictionary" error or similar.
If you have any interest in the web-development industry, you will find that there are countless entries on the internet about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - from so-and-so hot SEO tactics to the best SEO practices, and so on. There are also tonnes of blogs and websites like Search Engine Land, SEOmoz etc that provide SEO tools, guides, tips, and more. But can you learn all about SEO from these sources? For a person working in the SEO industry, or working as a SEO, is it necessary for him to have a blog or a website? Have you learned something about SEO that you wouldn't know if you haven't had your own blog?
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Post Contributed by Hassam Ahmad Awan, a Gold Star MBT contributor and senior co-author. You can catch him always on his blog Bloggingehow
Its a pleasure for me to share one of a Blogger tweak that we managed to implement on BloggingeHow.com recently that makes sure that every author's image is shown up beside their post titles, both on home and post pages. The dynamic tweak enables every individual authors in Blogger based blogs to get them selves showcased. Also as for readers, its a much satisfying thing to know the actual person behind the article. Its much easier to get your self related with the post. It will display author pics dynamically unlike the static way that Mohammad shared months ago which can be find here: Show Profile Avatars next to post titles. 
Have you ever considered grabbing more control over your AdSense ads through, say the AdSense Ad review center? The Ad review Center is a really powerful tool that lets you tweak the settings, and control ads that appear in your site's ad units. Following a set of changes and improvements from Google earlier this year, that gave this useful tool even more power and reliability, Google has now introduced another remarkable feature - image filtering. This new feature will let you find ads, and review them very easily and effectively, hence saving your time.
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Blogging has become very popular, and has become a 'hot' way of earning money online. But while so many people make a fortune at blogging, a lot of others get discouraged, and quit blogging. The major reason for this is, some people just don't know how to avoid some pitfalls that accompany the field. There's a lot more to blogging than just writing and earning money in return. Take a look at the top 10 reasons people quit blogging, and learn to avoid those pitfalls.
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We often hear and use the term Search Engine Optimization (SEO) with regards to blogging / website designing, and getting content on Google. But what is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear this word? A lot of people picture link building and other such practices, which kind of limits their imagination and their field. But comparing its actual meaning to the way it is used today, do you think there's any difference between the two? And do you think the name is descriptive of the way it is used these days? Or should it be renamed appropriately? Here's Google's viewpoint on the matter.
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Google rolls out its algorithmic updates on a regular basis now. And it impacts a lot of websites positively, as well as negatively. Although the negative effect might be because of shady practices or spam action, it could also be a mistake, for which Google offers webmasters an option to file a reconsideration report. So if you think your website has been unduly penalized, or maybe if there's a misconception from Google's side, you can use this option. But some people have been submitting and submitting reconsideration requests, but don't hear anything about it for weeks, or even months. So how long does Google take to actually process a reconsideration request?
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LiveJournal is a great free resource for people who want to keep a log or a diary of sorts of theirs online, or share their life experiences with their friends and family. It allows people to make posts, and then cross-post and share on their social media profiles. Hence, these journals have all the markings of a blog. But for people who started off with LiveJournal, but aren't satisfied with the limited options it has, Blogger is a great option for them. Blogger is so much more than what LiveJournal is. So if you're not satisfied with LiveJournal, you can just move your blog from LiveJournal over to Blogger and get much more functionality.
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Campaign tags, also known as URL parameters, are a way of telling apart different variables, such as a visitor's source, or affiliate id, or something similar. Hence, they are used for tracking purposes. These tags or parameters change the URL, even if they might point to the same content. For example www.example.com and www.example.com?ref=1234, both might point to the same webpage. So the important question is, how does Google treat such URLs? It is logical to think about them as two different URLs, since there's an added key-value pair. And some parameters even change the content on a webpage. So how does Google interpret such links that have a campaign tag? Does it consider them as the same page or not? And what are the SEO effects of inbound links?
Blogger is a very widely used publishing platform, mostly because its strength lies in its simplicity and ease of use. It is quite easy to use, and is recommended for beginner bloggers who are looking for a quick and easy way to create a presence for themselves online. For bloggers who have created a WordPress blog, but are at a loss to maintain or modify it, they have a great option in Blogger. They can easily migrate their WordPress blog to Blogger without any hitch. In this post, we will talk about how you can shift from WordPress to free Blogger.
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Are site-wide backlinks good or bad for your website? People are often confused by the question, and most are under the impression that the more the backlinks to a website, the better, no matter whether they are from the same, or a different domain. And judging from a crawler's point of view, it seems logical, since crawlers crawl each link on a page, and then follow the link to the linked page, and a backlink is registered for that page if it's external. But is it worth back-linking to a site more than once? More importantly, does it have any pitfalls?
We have previously discussed about the different screen size available out there, and how to optimize your website for better experience on smartphones and Tablets. Since the evolution of the internet and the advancement in display technology, the number of pixels has been increasing, from the small VGA display to the current ultra-HD 2048 x 1600 display. So webmasters have been trying forever to make use of the high resolutions and to return better value to the users. This calls for a redesigning of most major aspects of a site. Fortunately, Google AdSense team is here to help in the process. On popular demand, it has just announced a new ad size of 300 x 600 for webmasters who use AdSense. And that is the largest skyscraper ever that will surely boost your overall AdSense earning by increasing the click through rate (CTR) of all your pages.
By far, the most popular method of acquiring links among webmasters is guest blogging. People write for other websites in exchange for links to their own websites. This not only gives people a backlink, it also gives them a small increase in traffic, hence making it a favorite among bloggers. But sometimes, it seems a bit too easy, as anyone can pick up content from the internet and submit a guest post about it. And since the practice is widely used, a lot of spammy activity is bound to surface at one time or another. So what does Google do about it? Will it penalize websites for links acquired through guest blogging?
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Mobile devices such as Smartphones, and especially Tablets, are now fast becoming more and more popular, and although nowhere near replacing desktops, they do seem to be gaining up on browser statistics. Now, they have more than 10% of the share, with Tablets almost as much being used as smartphones. This makes optimizing websites for mobile devices all the more important. But tablet users now don't want you to return a mobile version of your website to them. They want the desktop experience. But although there are no official guidelines from Google on creating search engine and user friendly tablet-optimized site, there are a few tips you can apply to make your website work across multiple platforms.
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Previously, we have talked about a new feature released by Facebook recently called Facebook Offers. This feature lets you promote your brand by offering people rewards for visiting your website or your brand's physical location. Simple creating an offer, however, is just a start. To make it work, you have to utilize the maximum potential of your audience by designing a successful offer, and keeping the basic Facebook marketing tips in mind. And since you're spending money on creating offers, you have to be extra careful, as a slight mistake might result in a loss for your business. Here, we'll discuss some tips for designing a successful Facebook Offer.
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Are you thinking about launching a new website, or maybe a service or an online store? If yes, then chances are that you might want to take the initial phase of setting up a domain and website a bit more seriously than you'd ordinarily do. Ever opened a webpage, only to find that it is no where to be found on the internet? That's because there's nothing on that domain at present. Worse still is the parked domain page, advertising the hosting company, which makes you think you've finally landed onto an existing page, only to realize that it is no good either. So what sort impression do you want to give to people who know of your newly launched domain's existence, and would like to know more? Is parking the domain a sensible idea?
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So, Google PageRank has been updated again this week, just as expected. And so far, the update does not seem to be a major one - but then again, give it some time. The last update took place in August 2012, and the one before that on May 2012. So it's pretty obvious that Google is now rolling out these updates quarterly, i.e. after every three months. So the next update is expected in the first 10 days of February 2013. We congratulate everyone whose PR didn't drop. And for those whose did, there's a few things you can do which we will mention. And again, keep in mind that Google PR should not a priority for you - read on to see why.
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Google is always constantly trying to expand its influence by introducing new features, while trying at the same time to improve upon those of its products that are popular. Hence we've seen a plethora of new tools and features being introduced across the Google-sphere in the recent past. And yesterday, we were talking about this same thing that why Google cuts down on some of its products to give more space to its existing products. Today, we'll talk about a new feature recently introduced in Gmail, which allows you to compose emails much faster and easier.
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Google is one of the most successful internet company, and it's scope is so wide now that almost every internet user uses at least one product from Google. And Google continues to expand and create new products. But in the process, it has been pulling the plug on some products as well. Take iGoogle, for example. Or Google Video or Google Talk Chatback. There's a whole plethora of products that Google introduced, but now have been discontinued. But why does the internet giant cut off its products, even when people do seem to be using them?
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Yesterday, we talked about a latest marketing and advertising feature introduced by Facebook called Facebook Offers. Facebook Offers let you promote your brand or products by giving out rewards to people who visit your website or your brand's physical location (office, store etc). These rewards can be anything, from an ebook to a small gift hamper to an entry into a lucky draw for a larger prize. It is the next step in Facebook marketing, and you can be one of the first ones to make use of this feature. We have already talked about what Facebook Offers. Today, we'll talk about the different types of offers, and how to add Redeem codes or Barcodes for people to be able to redeem your offers.
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Facebook has just recently launched a new feature for brand pages: Page offers. Page offers are basically rewards for your audience or customers who can claim them by visiting your store or online website, and also share with their friends. Not only does this engage your current customers or audience on a new level, it also extends the reach of your service or brand. Offers require a budget to run, but could worth be the investment your brand has been in need of. So let's take a look at how you can create offers, and what you can do with them.
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One of the greatest influence in the online word is the power of the written word. People, especially bloggers mostly make use of writing to convey their message to their readers. But have you ever thought of using images, or videos to do the same? Of course, a lot of people use videos and images on their blogs or websites. But how about presenting your awesome blog posts in the form of a video? Maybe not every follower of yours is following your lengthy blog posts that you share on social media, So why not try something new, and present your blog posts in a whole different way?
As we have previously discussed, Google recently launched a Disavow Links Tool. Using this tool, bloggers and webmasters can 'disavow', or disinherit some selected incoming links to their websites, so that Google won't consider those links when evaluating the website. The idea is to prevent spam-backlinking, that can bring down a website's ranking, because Google considers the quality of the backlinks to a website more than the quantity, and hence penalizes for bad or spam linking. So for any malicious websites trying to link to your site, their links can easily be disregarded. But before you go on disavowing every link that looks suspicious to you, there are a few things you should be mindful of first.
So the U.S presidential race is a full swing, and expectations are high as the election day arrives. Different people have different ways of keeping track of the race, and so do many websites which provide varying data on who has the most support. But every term (four years), more and more people are looking for reliable sources of information on the voting process and their ballots. Google has now made this incredibly easy, and searching for such information is no longer a hitch. It has launched a Voter Information Tool that will help voters stay updated about the elections.
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Making sub-domains on a domain has now become pretty popular, and many bloggers are now using sub-domains to create custom pages, such as contact and about pages. Although they look professional (and classy :P), they raise a concern. Usually, they are not part of a theme or template, and are custom designed. So some of the on-page SEO elements might be present. And Google Panda and Penguin is said to be domain-level penalty, with one low quality page effecting the whole site. So the popular question arises; how does Google view these sub-domains? And what is the difference, if any, between sub-directory structure and sub-domain structure?
Okay. So this is an important question that many people have now started asking: Do Human "Quality Raters" Influence which sites are impacted by Panda? You might have heard of a manual penalty for a site, and in our post about removing backlinks to avoid penalty, we talked about when a website gets hit by an algorithm, and when a site gets manually penalized. This concept gives rise to a common question: if these 'quality raters' influence whether a website gets impacted by an algorithmic update, such as Panda or Penguin, then how is the consumers' reaction gauged? Meaning who is to say which site gets penalized and which doesn't?
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Do AdWords Customers get special treatment in organic search results? This is a question that's become quite common now among webmasters, especially those advertising their website with Google AdWords. And that's understandable, considering the money they spend in doing so. A lot of people also think that if someone buys that ad spot on the right side of the page, then his website gets some sort of an algorithmic boost, and gets an advantage over others and thus ranks higher. Is there any truth to it? And if so, is it any fair to the other webmasters? Google answers this important question in a latest video uploaded by Matt Cutts.
If you are a blogger or looking up for blogging to choose it as your career then Google has some real good news for you. Blogger has always provided its users, all the opportunities to express their point of views, meanwhile learning a great deal online. Taking a deeper look and conducting a detailed survey on the problems and queries of its users, Blogger team has recently announced its availability and contact procedure with its users. Knowing that, you can now feel free to present your queries to the team and can hope to get some fast results.
Eid Blessings and cheers to all MBT readers! We are back with some Freebies! It has been observed that some of our very loyal and active blog members have been waiting for some new download resources on this EID so we have planned to make their weekend special with two freebies! We have been serving the bloggers’ community and blogosphere for years and we will continue to do so inshAllah and with your consistent support. It is great honor to know that newbies and the contemporaries often look at MBT and apply the tips and tricks shared here. This great feeling urged us to compile some very basic, briefly explained yet exceptionally important information with you all in the form of these e-books.
Let us take the pleasure of wishing all beloved readers of MBT and SEM a Happy Eid-ul-Adha Mubarak! Wishing you a peaceful Eid on behalf of Qasim and Nida. May this Holy Occasion of EID brings Peace and joy to you and your family and may shower on you the best of Allah's blessings. Eid-ul-adha is the second biggest joyous occasion for Muslims after Eid-ul Fitr where they share these splendid three holy days with their friends and family and forget all their past worries, and grievances.
When work and study stress exceeds a limit, I often try refreshing myself amongst young teenagers and enthusiastic tech-savvy audience. Last Sunday on 21st October 2012, the team of Reviving Youth and Anima(Towards Light) organized an event tagged as "Scene On Hai" which means Plugged in or to be more appropriate Scene is On in English. It was organized at PACC's auditorium i.e Pakistan American culture Center in Karachi. The event included some interesting guest speakers and was spiced up with Magic, Illusion, Drama and Singing performance which literally turned my mood on. Ayesha Gull, President of Anima invited us for a Guest speaking session which proved no less than a great honor. Following are some highlights that we could capture so far during our one and a half hour presentation, the longest so far.
As you all know, Google is pretty hard-up about duplicate content, now more than ever, because an awful lot of blogs and websites have started making money by blatantly copying material from other sources. This not only is unfair to the original source, it also jeopardizes the integrity of search results returned by Google. Hence the stringent TOS (Terms of Service). But what about adding quotations, or sentences/paragraphs quoted from other websites? It does classify as content copied directly from another website. So how does Google treat such content and is it safe to include it on your website? Well, Google just released a video explaining how Google treats such content.
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WordPress is a well-known platform for Blogging and it is being used by millions of webmasters and bloggers. It is a self-hosted blogging platform. MBT is hosted on Blogger.com but, there are hundreds of other popular blogs which are hosted on WordPress. So therefore, WordPress can’t be ignored for Blogging. It is also called WP in short words by webmasters. It is a CMS (content management System) which provides you the opportunity to set up your blog easily. And it is totally developed in PHP, a popular web programming language. In this post I will give you some basic tips before establishing a blog with WP. My tips will be for securing WP, optimizing WP and designing WP. But before going straight to my tips I would like to give you some information about WordPress features and benefits.
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It's a fun weekend, this, and we have been sharing some useful and fun tools while at it! So here's our chance to go a little bit further! We know you all use Facebook, and must have seen those rage comics and fun memes circulating around faster than wildfire. Funny, comic images on Facebook, in simple words. The word 'meme' comes from a Greek word meaning to copy something. A meme is usually viral, and spreads around from person to person, much like a virus. On social media, these fun memes are much like viral videos, only, much more viral, because they're easier to watch, and people like them.
So you've got an idea for a funny comic or meme? Here' we will share the top 5 sites where you can create your very own memes and trolls for free, share them on social media and see them go viral all over the world!
Writing is one of the most important part of blogging. A blog is nothing but a sequential order of your writings online, available to all who have internet access. But wouldn't it be great if you could create your very own eBook, say from your own blog posts? You could then boast to your friends about authoring a book! Here is a great web app that will create an eBook from your WordPress or Blogger blog, and will then allow you to download it in PDF form so you and others can read it offline!
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Have you heard about the DropBox Space Race? No, it isn't the moon related thingy. Rather, it's perhaps more exciting to those of us who're more into the web and 'the cloud' and stuff. The Space Race is a new initiative by DropBox, encouraging students to use their school/college email addresses, and get more space out of their DropBox accounts! You can sign up, or connect your college email address with your current account, and instantly get 3 GB of space! So if you have an email address that ends in .edu (eg, yourname@domain.edu), then you might as well use it to earn more space!
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Yesterday, we talked about whether or not bad links on your site are worth deleting. The simple answer to the question was, you might as well do it, but it'll be better to adjust your website, rather than trying to bend it. If you've been manually penalized, then this step becomes more or less necessary. But what about the links to your website, which aren't in your control? Luckily, Google has now released a link Disavow tool, which will solve such problems. Quite simply, any unnatural links to your site can be disinherited, or 'disavowed', hence preventing Google from considering them.
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Google Panda and Penguin have been some of the most infamous algorithmic updates Google has ever made. They have effected tonnes of websites and blogs, and are still working to devour any website with malpractice that comes their way. We have many times discussed about how to avoid penalty from such algorithm updates. And in them, we have talked a lot about Google's interest in you links, out bound and incoming both. It's common knowledge that Google is now concentrating a lot more on the quality of the links than on the quantity. So a common question easily arises: If you are hit by a penalty, does it help to remove your backlinks?
This is part 2 of our series "XHTML to HTML" . We have already learned how to turn blogspot's layout into blank HTML page but we have no yet shared how to remove the dynamic XML tags alone leaving behind the stylesheet, scripts and html design. In today's tutorial I will try to share the basic way of understanding a websites core structure by identifying the important div sections that make up the structure. I hope you have followed part one of the series and have downloaded your blogspot template. I also assume you have Dreamweaver or Codelobster installed on your desktop computers or laptops.
I already shared how a dynamic XHTML BlogSpot template could be converted into a blank Static HTML Template, but what if you needed to keep the same design of your blog and only remove the Dynamic objects like widgets. This could easily be achieved by carefully converting the XHTML format of code structure to Basic HTML 4.0 File. This will enable you to even embed or add a PHP or ASP.net code inside the Cloned BlogSpot design in HTML format. A live example is our Contact page with a PHP contact Form. It is not possible to add PHP inside blogger templates because no direct access to web hosting ftp account is available so far. When you visit our contact page, you will feel like you are still in BlogSpot template environment but in reality its only a Cloned HTML design of the original template. The steps today are interesting and fun to try. Make sure you have a webhosting to try today's tutorial. We are using hostgator as our blog web host to host all our files and resources.
Guest blogging is a very popular way of getting backlinks for a site. It is an effective marketing strategy for a blog, and allows you to publicize you content to places beyond your reach. In short, guest blogging is when you write for another website, free of charge, in return for a backlink (or two). And we have already talked about how linking is important for your website. But doesn't it all look a bit convenient? As in, anyone can write (or spin) articles, and get them published on other websites and get more links to rank higher in Google? Here is Google's take on the subject, along with some best practices.
No one knew that a simple Breadcrumb used in the fairyTale of "Hansel and Gretel" would become a website element one day. Breadcrumbs or breadcrumb trail is a navigation system used in websites that offer more usability to the visitor. They appear horizontally above Post titles or below headers. They show user location and tells him what post and which section of the blog category he is on. Breadcrumb provides links back to the pages the user already visited in hierarchical order. Often a colon ( : )or slash ( / ) or even a greater-than sign ( > ) is used as hierarchy separator. These are now widely used by blog owners in both Wordpress and Blogger platforms. Unfortunately Breadcrumbs destroy the advantages of Permalinks which play great role in targeting rich keywords. Blogger Team has introduced permalinks on all blogspot blogs and we already discussed several ways of optimizing permalinks, now it's the right time to realize how Trailing links effect permalink display in SERPs.
You guys needed more tutorials? There we go with yet another unique and interesting hack for blogger Archive Widget. You can see at our sidebar area that the default BlogSpot archive widget is transformed into a Wordpress Type Archive calendar with custom styles and flavors. The easy script and stylesheet today will enable you all to create a calendar archive gadget for your blogs using MBT's custom style sheets for Dark and Light backgrounds. The script is coded by phydeaux3 and redesigned by MBT with custom colors and more easy installation. The plugin has been made compatible and easy to implement. Just follow the basic steps below.
Read more »This is a guest post by Ahmed Safwan of To Start Blogging.
Do you want to get more clients that are willing to work with you? Do you want to make 10,000$+ monthly? Then you need to make a blog that can attract clients who pay you what you want. To do this, you need to follow the next 4 steps and you will soon make six figures from the internet every six months.
DropBox is one of the most popular cloud storage services available, and it has now teamed up with the most popular social networking website, Facebook, to bring its users one step closer to social integration. We had been hearing a lot about DropBox partnering with Facebook, but this has only now been implemented. As a result, DropBox and Facebook users will no longer have to upload files from their PC to share on their Facebook Groups. They can simply select the file(s) from their DropBox account, which will then be added to the Facebook Group. Easy, no? Let's see how this works out.
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Whenever I find an opportunity to convey the message to young talented students, I never miss jumping inside the public academic pool. On 6th October, 2012, the Media Marketing and Management Team at Greenwich University (located in defence Karachi) organized "The Social Affair 2012" event. The event aimed at celebrating the viral spread of social media websites locally and how it has helped individuals in different ways. Around six professionals from different IT fields were invited to share their precious experiences with the students. I was fortunately one of the invited Guest Speakers for the evening and the topic I chose was "Make Money Online From your Living Room". It turned out to be one of the most memorable events of my life with tons of warm feedback and appreciation from everywhere. The hospitality I received from the organizers, faculty members and enthusiastic young students can't simply be thanked enough. I would like to give some highlights of the great experience I had that day.
Blogging is fun. Not only is it a great way to earn money, it also helps take your mind off things. But sometimes, when the burden becomes great, it is all a blogger thinks about. Juggling your blogging career between academic or professional, and family life can be tricky, because a blog requires some serious time and hard work. Maybe this is the reason why a lot of bloggers can't concentrate on the quality of their content. If only there was a way to reduce the time taken to write a post, so that bloggers could focus on more important issues. Well, luckily, there is! You can do blogging by voice only using voice recognition apps, so instead of writing long posts, you can simply dictate them!
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We have already talked about avoiding Panda Penalty for your website, and what to do if you get hit, because apparently, Google isn't very forgiving, and has impacted tonnes of websites. But that is about as far as we can go to avoid a penalty. The next step would be to facilitate Google, and help it find, crawl, and index your website. The easier it is for Google to find your site, the quicker it will be indexed. And the better it is, the faster it will be crawled on a regular basis, hence giving you more organic traffic each day. Here are some of the best practices recommended by Google that you should apply to your website in order to get the most out of it.
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Google AdSense is one of the most popular ways to monetize blogs and websites. A lot of bloggers and webmasters monetize their sites in different ways to make money. One of the lesser used way to earn money is through tweaking your blog feed to include ads. This is particularly useful for people who have a large number of feed subscribers, so they might as well tap into, and harness the benefits. Ordinarily, Google AdSense for feeds would be a good option for such monetization. But now, Google has decided it's perhaps better off without AdSense for feeds, which might be cause for concern for some popular bloggers.
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