RollMe Wants to Teach You About Smart Blogging

Developed for “smart blogging,” Rollme aims to deliver any relevant information and posts from friends in one convenient feed, Newsroll.

“Newsroll allows you to read content from all the linked social networks and blog resources. (…) You don’t have to sign into each of your social networks and open many windows in your browser,”

describe the company the main advantage of this service.

Apart from social networking, the service delivers tools for easy blogging. The blogger has to create his or her posts in a visual editor, choose a well-crafted title and type in the text. With the next step, the blogger has to add links, photos, videos or any other type of information that can make the post more interactive and vivid. Then all the blogger needs to do is to select a network were the blogger wants to publish the announcement.

RollMe Helps Bloggers Make Money

RollMe also takes care of the design options with the Showcase option. These showcases are pages created for one post each with an individual design. The “show it” option is available for any post in the Newsroll. If the blogger chooses to advertise one of his friends’ posts, he can do so. The blogger can even add his ideas to take the topic a little further and boost an online debate over a specific topic. There are also design option here as a set of predefined themes.

The service also taps into the bloggers’ financial hopes. RollMe promises to help users monetise their activities. They can earn money from context ads and affiliated programs that are automatically insert into their posts. The royalties are then sent to PayPal accounts.
RollMe comes with two account options, a free one and a pro-account that becomes available for users who are willing to pay a $7 monthly pay. The pro-account promises “100% export to any blog platforms and switch off advertising blocks on the publication pages.”

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Have a project that needs a voice-over? Not sure where to start? Who to audition? Where to find reliable and cheap voice-over artist? Are you already feeling lost in the thought process? Then you should absolutely meet VoiceBunny. This web service is guaranteed to make your headaches go away, and fast.

VoiceBunny, Cheap VoiceOver Database for Your Needs

VoiceBunny is a brand new startup that’s looking to carve a name for itself in the business of voice overs by using a rather unorthodox method. The company is relying on low pricing in the hopes of increasing the turnaround process. Thus, it provides a massive library (135,000 voice artist professionals are waiting to be at your service, to be exact) for those looking for some decent talent to hire.

Another important feature of VoiceBunny is time. Everything moves super fast. For example, the average time for a project to be accepted by a voice professional is about 98 seconds. The cost per word is not that budget-wise, if you ask me, the average being 8 cents. And more than 50 languages are supported. Everything sounds too good to be true. But then…

VoiceBunny claims it is doing customers a service. Its statement seems to be based on the extremely high price of a professional voice work. The company claims that a 60 second commercial might cost the interested party, somewhere around $3000 – a figure that includes agency services, booking the talent and the studio time. When you think about this 8 cents per words, it totally changes your mind, right? And what’s even more interesting about this start-up is that you can even make money! If you’ve got a lovely voice and you are a master of English pronunciation, why not give it a try?

Transform Your Blog Into a Podcast With Voice Bunny

A home studio is even a bigger investment, they say, amounting to $12,000 – a sum that includes equipment and an appropriate recording computer. But some voices seem to disagree. This is history, they say, and came up with a counter example saying that now a voice studio could be set up with merely $1000. If you are still not sure if VoiceBunny would be a good alternative, why not try their service for free, as they are giving you $100 to try out their service.

Even so, it’s not unlikely for a company to go to different measures to try and gain some attention. All in all, connecting to the site will automatically turn your blogs or articles into podcasts in a matter of minutes. One such example is this website. And, when you think about it, it does makes sense to have a podcast version of your website. Some people just don’t have enough time to read but they’ll gladly listen to your podcast. We feel that VoiceBunny is an efficient product, has a great portfolio and it’s very affordable. It’s worth a decent shot!

photo credit

© Raju PP for Technically Personal!, 2012. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us, so we can take legal action immediately. If you are on Twitter you can follow me @rajupp! | Permalink |

As far as CDN services go, you have three options when choosing the best one for you:

• Free CDN services, these have the obvious advantage that they are free, but the but do not offer the best performance
• Pay as you go CDN, in which you pay a monthly fee depending on your storage needs and your web site’s traffic
• Pre-paid CDN, this option, in my opinion, is the best option. You pay a 1 year fee and you have all your features available.

The most important aspects you have to think about when choosing a CDN service is the traffic on your web site, for example, CDN services are recommended for really high-traffic web sites, storage for your media files and the number of server nodes the CDN service offers, you should orient yourself towards a service that provides nodes on all continents. Here are some CDN providers you should definitely consider in your search for the best one:

1. MaxCDN

MaxCDN is one of the best CDN services you could find out there. It offers users a wide range of services and really affordable prices. You can get 1TB of traffic for $39.99, it’s easy to set it up and it offers the possibility to share a package with your friends if you want to cut back on the price. The results are impressive, almost 50% improvement off the loading time of your website.

2. Amazon CloudFront

Amazon CloudFront is another very good CDN service provider that offers users a host of features. There are a few drawbacks of using this system, though. The first may very well be the price: it can go up to even $300 for 1TB of traffic and the service does not allow file storage, but you do have the possibility of storing your files on other Amazon services such as Amazon Simple Storage Service or Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud for some reasonable prices, starting at $0,093 for 1GB monthly. On the other side, Amazon provides 19 edge nodes for it’s users, including 3 in Asia which should make for a somewhat faster response from the servers to all your visitors.

3. VPS.net

Many of you are already familiar with VPS.NET from the cloud storage it offers. Now, VPS.NET can provide CDN services with many features for its users: user friendly and many access servers around the world. It has a very flexible payment plan, that allows you to configure the best package for you, from $34.95 for 1TB up to $1934.95 for 20 TB. It’s one of the longest standing CDN providers in the market.

4. Cachefly

Cachefly is without a doubt, one of the best CDN services on the market. Its results are staggering and many of its clients are very pleased with it. So why isn’t it on the top of our list? The answer is simple: it’s way too expensive. If you are prepared to pay $99 a month for 256GB traffic, then you will get performance worth every penny from it, since it has 11 years experience in this field. Many bloggers that do use Cachefly opt for its custom plan options in which prices start at $0.03/GB.

5. CloudFlare

Cloud Flare is mainly known for offering free solutions, as well. If you ask me, that free plan is just to lure clients in and to keep them loyal forever after that. This CDN service is seems to be very well crafted, putting on your disposal 13 edge nodes around the world. The possibility to have CloudFlare’s plan for free is appealing to many, but for those who want a little extra boost to their web site, there are other options, such as $20 per month. An enterprise version will soon be available for medium to high traffic web sites.

6. SoftLayer

Another well known service, SoftLayer, offers a CDN service with some moderate prices for its users to enjoy. Although it’s not the cheapest out there, it is one of the best and it can handle high traffic web sites. If you are looking to get a CDN service, SoftLayer CloudLayer CDN is a must on your list.

Google Page Speed CDN

Although this CDN service is not available to everyone, it still promises some really good results. Knowing Google and its past products, this would be really good, the only downside so far is that it’s not available for most of Google’s own products.

Some of these services work better than other and we didn’t test them all! But, the bottom line is: you have to choose very carefully what CDN service you want to use, keeping in mind the requirements of your web site. The speed of a web site is very important, keeping your readers happy and make them come again and again.

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Guest post by Yo Noguchi.

Concentration is a finite resource. Our minds start to wander and the first place we go is conveniently located in the world wide web, which at its worst, can become a black hole for productivity. To help deal with this dilemma, a number of sites and programs designed to curb your procrastination habits and make you a more productive person are available to you online. Of course if you have a serious procrastination problem, you’ve probably come across this page while committing the act, but take the first step forward and take the time to try some of these sites.

The following are 5 sites to visit when putting off blogging.

1. Write or die

For those who need a little encouragement to finish writing their blog posts, write or die is just the thing. Pick a time limit, a word count aim and your ‘grace period’ (the time limit before a punishment is activated) and start writing. How passive or aggressive your punishment is depends on the mode you pick.

Gentle mode will give you a pop up box reminding you to continue writing, normal mode plays unpleasant sounds such as a baby crying or a poorly played violin. But if you’re feeling masochistic, set it at Kamikaze mode, where the program will automatically begin to delete your work if you’re not working fast enough.

2. Freedom

Ever feel that you’d actually get some work done if you just didn’t have the distraction of the web’s infinite amount of hilarious videos featuring cats. If so, consider installing Freedom. This site allows you to lock away the internet for a designated period of time, ranging from 45 minutes to eight hours.

Once your time is set, the only way you can deactivate it is to either wait until the timer ends or reboot your computer, which the designers hope you’ll feel isn’t worth the hassle. The program costs $10 but you can download a free trial just to see what life would be like if you didn’t check Beyonce’s twitter feed every two minutes.

3. StopDistractions

If you spend too much time on Facebook and Youtube but still need the internet to do actual research, StopDistractions is great for limiting your access to certain sites for a designated time period while still allowing you to access other sites. Therefore you could block sites such as Twitter and Facebook, but still allow yourself to work on WordPress.

4. LeechBlock

Working the same way as StopDistractions, LeechBlock allows you to block yourself from accessing websites either for a designated period of time, during a set time frame (9am to 5pm on weekdays) or a combination of both. To stop you from deactivating the program if you get annoyed, you can set a password or random access code to make it more difficult to reset it.

5. InstantBoss

If you have the willpower to not check the internet every second but work better with structure, install Instant Boss to help program work periods and break periods throughout your day.

The provided options allow you to designate the amount of time you want to work, your break period, and how many times you want these sessions to repeat. Through popups, you’ll be notified as to when you can take a break or get back to work.

6. MeeTimer

MeeTimer is different from the other programs in that instead of blocking sites, it monitors the amount of time you spend on sites when on the internet. After compiling the proper information, it gives you statistics on your surfing habits, including the percentage of time you could have spent working to guilt you into lessening your procrastination habits and to better utilize your time.

The next time your mind starts to wonder, try out one of these 6 sites to help control your procrastination habits.

Suggested Read: 5 Cool Tools to Block Distracting Websites

This was a guest post by Yo Noguchi who is an experienced freelancer, guest blogger, and frequent contributor to a blog hosted by Benchmark Email, one of the world’s global email services.

© Raju PP for Technically Personal!, 2011. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us, so we can take legal action immediately. If you are on Twitter you can follow me @rajupp! | Permalink |

The links shared on Google Plus are DoFollow by default. I wonder why none of the major SEO blogs have written about this. May be they are busy advising their clients how to cash in before everyone else gets to know about it. As a disclaimer, I’m not an expert (not even close) when it comes to SEO and stuff, but I do understand the basics of Page Rank flow.

For the uninitiated, dofollow links refer to those links on the webpage which passes the PageRank juice to the page which has been linked, while nofollow links refer to those which doesn’t pass the PageRank juice. Popular community websites like Wikipedia, Flickr, WordPress etc have deliberately made sure that all the links on their webpages are nofollow. This is basically aimed at avoiding link-spams from the community.

All Shared Links on Google+ are dofollow

During the initial days of Google+, I had observed that the links shared on the platform were dofollow and had even tried to alert Matt Cutts, the head of Google Webspam team. Though I didn’t get a response from him, I wasn’t too worried about this as Google wasn’t indexing any of the content on http://plus.google.com at that time. But few days back, Google started indexing the Google+ posts which are marked as “Public” and shared with everybody. Now, this is a game-changer. Look at the example search below, which explains why I feel this can be a disaster for Google+.

As we know, Facebook doesn’t let Google bot index the status updates of its users, but they still nofollow the links (may be since they let Bing index the content). Though I don’t ave clear cut information about the nature of links shared on Twitter, I believe they are nofollow as well.

Just yesterday, Google announced improvements to their +1 buttons. Now, webmasters can let their visitors share links to their Google+ profile via the +1 button. This means easier link spamming on Google Plus.

Currently, plus.google.com is a PR 8 site, which should entice the spammers (and non-spammers) alike to share as many links as possible. This can well be a calculated strategy by Google to get as many webmasters on board and make them share more links (and more time) on Google plus. There is every possibility that Google will magically turn the links as nofollow somewhere down the line. If not, get ready to be bombarded with link spams.

© Raju PP for Technically Personal!, 2011. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us, so we can take legal action immediately. If you are on Twitter you can follow me @rajupp! | Permalink |

There is no hard and fast rule that everyone visiting your blog should read your posts. People visiting your blog may partially depend on the SEO strategies you deploy; but guaranteeing the readability of the posts depends on how well you have presented the blog. There are a plethora of blogs that appear in the top results of Google search but only few are really readable.

So what’s the reason behind a blog being unreadable? Here are some basic ‘to dos’ that will make your blog post unreadable -

Disastrous Design – This is the first thing that catches the eyes of your audience. As the good old saying goes, “First impression is the best impression“; this is your first chance to create a heavy impression on your audience. If this goes awry then audience will surely have a negative feeling and may move away from your page. There have been many instances when blogs with basic design are too simple and normal. These designs irritate me since there is no uniqueness about it and those designs make the whole blog look plain. I will straight away close the blogs with such a plain look. On the other hand blogs that are too funky make me close my eyes (literally). Your blog will be readable only if you have used relative templates and elegant colors.

Vogue or Vague – Don’t write your post targeting a single audience. If the topic is too technical or if the topic demands to be written in one style then it’s fine. But, if the topic is “how to get successful with blogging” and you write in a way that can be understood only by entrepreneurs or ace bloggers, then the other naive bloggers may consider it to be vague and will close without reading a single paragraph. Be vogue in your writing but make sure that it doesn’t look vague for your readers.

Don’t Kill Your Blog Yourself – If you don’t update your blog often, then it will become a dead link or the page rank of your blog may be reduced but the worst of all is that the audience may not read it since it’s too old. Generally two things an audience checks are the date and comments. If your blog is old and has no comments then automatically user will move to other blogs. Therefore, updating latest information about the blogs in the comments is mandatory if you want people to read your blogs.

Ad or Jeopardy – Advertisements are surely a money grosser in blogging business; however flashy and funky ads are a turn down. This will make the audience loathe your post. Additionally, if the ads are present in between your posts or paragraphs then it will annoy the audience and thus resulting in making your blog unreadable (even if the content is highly informative).

Pop-Up will Pop You Down – Completely avoid pop-up ads, because not many users will have the pop-up settings blocked. In such a state of affairs they will annoyed if some ad window pops up while they read your blog. In process of closing pop ups they may close your blog too. All these may be small reasons but these matters a lot in the audience’s mind.

Have you got any more reasons for not reading a blog? Share them through comments.

© Raju PP for Technically Personal!, 2011. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us, so we can take legal action immediately. If you are on Twitter you can follow me @rajupp! | Permalink |

Guest Post by Sarah Johnston.

Editor’s note: This isn’t anything like you have read on Technically Personal for a long time. It’s a straight-from-the-heart article by a 76-year-old blogger, which I feel is a worthy read for every young(er) blogger.

Age brings wisdom and with wisdom comes knowing when to speak and when not to. But when you try to learn how to blog at this age you do not know what to say and what not to say. You are writing your thoughts from your heart; words are pouring out of your mind and appearing on paper. But what are all these words if nobody takes the time to read them?

When we get older and are part of the baby boom generation, grew up with rock and roll, pop music and Elvis Presley we are out of our safe zone when it comes to blogging. We can not see the nameless faces that read our post. But we can feel the rejection when we see nobody is interested in us and leaves a comment. We can tell that we are being rejected by the number of visitor that comes to our blog. We are not young and popular but we too have the same fears of rejection as you do.

What are our rejections?

After years we have come to live with the rejection we receive from the younger generation. They seem to have no time for us. Life has changed so much in the past 76 years and today people seem to run on speed with no time to slow down. The society is advancing at such a rapid pace and the young seem to have the energy to fit in and run the marathon each day.

When our children grew up there was no cable TV, Internet, and Wii to occupy their time. Social networks did not exist and our children were free to grow up and explore the great outdoors. Today both parents work and have found automated baby sitting for their children. They can be rest assured that their children are passing their time in front of a computer or TV playing video games.

Grandparents and Great Grandparents are rejected by their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. They would much rather spend their time socializing on Facebook, sending out Tweet, reading Tweets of other, following Tweets to view new videos, and playing with their Wii. When we try to ask them to play a game of checker or chess with us they say no thanks I have to be online to see what my friends are doing. Being concerned, I asked, do you know these people. Of course not,
they are my friends on Facebook and they have funny stories to tell.

Over the years we learn that the technology of today has left us in the dark and lost in cyber space. We can not find the door to open to see the light. It is like walking into a Star Wars movie for the first time and being introduces to the Dark Side. We have no idea what the Dark Side is but all we know is Internet has the attention of the world these days.

Our children think we need to be more with it as they call it. Setting us up blogging sites and telling us to write what ever we wish and share with the world. They have no time to listen to us any longer and think that blogging is the answer for us.

I have started to fall in love with blogging and a way to express and talk with people. But in doing so the rejection is still there. I feel like I can sit and write for hours but who is reading what I have said. Who cares to understand how important it is to learn how to cook, sew your own clothes, and teach moral to your children. Even through blogging we are being rejected for the simple fact nobody is paying attention to what we have to say. They do not care to even read what we write. If they do read it they can not even leave a comment as to their thoughts. We are discouraged to continue on and are rejected by the cyber space visitors.

What are our fears?

At the age of 50, we knew we were getting old. We feared the time of retirement and what we would do for the rest of our lives. When we were forced to retire we lost contact with part of our social life. People we grew to know and loved still had to work each day. They envied us to have the freedom to sleep in late, not go to work, time to travel, and time to do what we wanted.

Retirement at first was wonderful. It gave us time to read the books we had always wanted to read, Time to travel and go places we had dreamed of for years. But as the years pass and we still grow older we do not have the energy to travel like we use to. We are home more and wanting the company of other.

Fears have now set in as the days and years pass. We are left alone and people thinking it is time that we go and sit in a retirement community to socialize with others our age. We fear if we give in and do this then we have lost all hope of anyone paying attention to use again. We will be left in some old pasture waiting for our time to be finished.

When I first started blogging I was so excited at the new challenge it had to offer. It gave me the feeling I was important again. I had a purpose and meaning to get up each day. I was so excited and dreamed of what I wanted to write and share with my new audience. I could not wait to go to my computer and start writing each day.

Then the fear set in. I saw that my happiness was turning to sorrow. I was not attracting anyone to my site. I could not even give away anything for free. Fear of failure at such an early stage in the game I consulted the Google God. I asked him for his great wisdom to help me find my way. To give me the answers that nobody would or was willing to share with me. I was seeking the knowledge and wisdom of the only person I could trust – Google.

After days and weeks of consulting the Great Google God I was enlightened by some of his great wisdom. He started to point me in directions I had no idea where I was going. Reading and searching and following his advice I was pointed to one site where they spoke so highly of guest blogging. You want to be heard and people to see what you say it is necessary to post your content on another blog site. So here I am today following the advice of the Great Google God. I am trying to be heard on this blog.

Now Fear of Rejection set in

After taking careful consideration to write this article and submit it to unknown people I fear I have made a mistake. I fear that the person who reads this article will laugh at me. I can hear it now. He is saying how anyone at my age can have the wisdom to know what his readers want. What would make me think he would take a chance with me and post this for his readers? The fear of being rejected again by someone I have no idea who he is, settles in.

Other fears of mine are when and if someone decides to post this content the audience this person has will laugh and reject my ideas. They will not even bother to read what I have to say let alone leave a comment to me. I fear that now the rejection I receive each day when I try to understand this new world. When I share some wonderful recipes that I love to cook and nobody even says thank you to me I am hurt and rejected. I feel like giving up and putting all my recipes back into the shoe boxes and storing them on the shelf like my Mother did.

I fear most of how fast time is passing. How each day I want to share my wisdom and knowledge with the world. So when I am gone what I know lives on forever. But in doing so I am feeling the rejection of nobody caring what I have to offer. I fear the rejection of the social media and how to fit in. I am not young and wise to send out tweets and comments to others. I am trying to learn from the Google God what to do so people will even see me. But in my efforts and trying to learn this new world more fear traps me each day.

I have now come to the conclusion that if I allow my fears and rejections to take over I will lose. I will lose the one piece of enjoyment I have found in my life. I will lose the chance to communicate with other. I have come to realize that even if nobody reads my post, comments on my recipes, and encourages me. My content will stay here it will not be deleted or turned to star-dust. It will be here for years to come.

Like so many bloggers who have given up before me. Their blogs sit in the bloggers grave yard unattended lost and not yet forgotten. Why because, Google still sees them, when you ask the Google God a question he still shows you the answer. Some of the answer I found was on blogs that people stopped using. But the advice they wrote is still there for me to read.

I have found a new courage to go on because of the Great Google God. I know that he will not forget who I am when I have passed away. He can still see my blog site, the posts I poured my heart into, and the messages I have left behind for all to read. One day you will find my wonderful recipes, messages, and health remedies. I know that I am not wasting my time, sharing all this with you. Google will make sure that I stay alive and not forgotten no matter how many people come after me.

This was a guest post by Sarah Johnston, a 76-year-old first time blogger who writes about Home Remedies, cooking recipes, cookbooks, food tips and information at Grandma Simpson’s Kitchen in Roby Texas. In trying to understand the new world of blogging, she is keeping an online journal of her discoveries at Blogging @ 76 The Quest.

Image Courtesy: CopyBlogger

© Raju PP for Technically Personal!, 2011. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us, so we can take legal action immediately. If you are on Twitter you can follow me @rajupp! | Permalink |

The short term answer: The same thing you find yourself naturally linking to!

That however isn’t really very accurate – only the concept is. Facebook has ~550 million users (It’s hard to keep up these days) in the U.S.A. and more growing every day. The number of webmasters out there is – well let’s just say a very small percentage of that. And the things that you and I are linking to, really isn’t what average people are going to be posting on their Facebook feeds.

The concept is the same however, as it is when you naturally link to something during link building or writing a post. People on Facebook recommend stuff that they like. Here is one great example (for all you sports fans out there) of an article called The Lessons of Nathaniel Jones.

I put this as an example because I found myself, without even thinking about it, recommending it on Facebook (plus it’s just an amazing article). No wonder, more than 9000 people have shared it on Facebook alone.

This is important because Google is leaning on social media now more than ever, and probably will do so more and more in the future. The reasons are simple. People want to read what their friends read.

Why else is this important?

Let’s take a look at the latest Google algorithm update: the Panda update (or farmers update).

This update was aimed at websites that were considered “content mills” and that’s characteristics included, but were not limited to, the following criteria:

• Low % of users returning to a site.
• Low visit times on page or site
• High bounce rate on page or site
• A low amount of original content on a page or site
• and finally Low or no mentions or links to a page or site in social media and from other sites.

As compared to the characteristics of your slightly below average “Guest Post:”

• One or Two links to the same web site
• No other links that increase the value of the article
• Below average, rehashed content
• ~ 400-600 words
• More often than not a BIO with keywords like “Guest Post” or “Guest Author” that more often than not contain a link
• No or very little conversation taking place
• and finally Low or no mentions or links to a page or site in social media and from other sites.

Basically, the below average guest posts that are used to manipulate Google’s search engine look like a potential victim to a Google Algorithm update as they have a set of defined criteria. It is only a matter of time before Google can legitimately separate the characteristics of a good guest post and a bad one and apply it in the SERPs.

This will however be hard to do, especially since good guest posts provide a lot of value on the Internet, and therefore should not be guilty by association with the guest posts that are merely aimed at link building.

That’s where social media comes in. Social media will make it easier for Google to apply Link related algo updates, because where links fail to rank correctly, social media – and the natural spread of quality content will not lie.

Did you notice something about the post I said I recommended to my Facebook friends? It had nothing to do with SEO. And unless you have about 500 friends on Facebook that all want to recommend your SEO article – you aren’t going to be doing too well in that category.

When it comes to SEO, if you want to make a good post that people will naturally recommend, you have to make it relevant to them. This can be very hard, as SEO to the average Joe is like Rocket Science. People will only recommend SEO articles naturally if:

• It directly affects them
• It is something they can relate to
• It is controversial
• It strikes emotions
• It gets them excited
• It shows them Why they should know about SEO

The urge to want to share something with your friends is something we all experience, and it is something that should be put into writing efforts.Whenever you are providing true value, you can be sure you will be safe from algo updates – and true value will soon be measured by social media.

This was a guest post by Philip Rudy. Philip helps to run and maintain www.inetzeal.com, which is a Internet marketing company that helps provides businesses with all of their SEO needs.

© Raju PP for Technically Personal!, 2011. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us, so we can take legal action immediately. If you are on Twitter you can follow me @rajupp! | Permalink |

Guest post by Daniel Cassady.

There’s no doubt that blogging is time-consuming work. You have to produce content, manage comments, and promote your blog using social media sites, at a minimum. Beyond that, if you have guest and co-bloggers, you’ve got to stay in the loop on what they’re doing and make sure they’re on the right track.

If you’re struggling to manage your time, your posts, and even your team, there are a wide variety of great free tools to streamline your work. Here’s a list of free services and sites that can help you keep your blogging house in order:

1. To Be Done

To Be Done is a great first-time project management tool, so if you haven’t had a lot of experience with these types of programs, TBD, a completely Web-based program, is a good place to start.

Projects are laid out in a user friendly, graphic style and organized into tasks, which can be prioritized by date or rank. If your blog has multiple contributors and you’re having a rough time getting organized and staying organized, TBD’s cloud-based collaboration tools may be exactly what you need.

2. iTeamwork

This is another great web-based program for blogs that have lots of contributors. Start a new project, assign tasks to different members of your team, and iTeamwork then sends emails to task-owners asking them to register to see the task.

iTeamwork stands out among most free project management systems for two reasons. First, it gives you the option to change a task into a project (perfect for tasks that may need more than one person to do); and second, you can attach notes to each task. These notes basically allow you to update the task with any new information or instructions for the task-owner.

3. dotProject

Online service dotProject is the perfect web-based tool for bloggers who run more than one blog at a time. dotProject give you the chance to manage all your blogs – and all the projects and tasks on those blogs – in a well-designed, easy to navigate program.

While the dotProject software is free, you do have to pay for hosting on the site, but with all the features available to you, the price is well worth it.

4. Skype

The Skype of yesteryear was pretty limited, and only allowed you to make phone calls, both local and international. The new Skype is a whole other animal, letting you chat, send files, and collaborate on content.

But the real value of Skype to bloggers is its ability to help you create fast and easy content. Need some blog content on the fly? Skype empowers you to video conference with guests and create interviews, and you can use a quick Skype conversation for an instant and compelling blog post.

5. stock.xchng

Sometimes the most time-consuming part of blogging life is tracking down interesting images to accompany your posts. You can easily spend hours looking for that oh-so-perfect shot, and many paid services lack the variety of solid images needed to add color and style to your blog.

With stock.xchang, recently bought by Getty Images, there are premium images available for a price, but the vast majority of images are high-quality, royalty free photos that you can add to your blog in seconds. Save images in your lightbox and you can go back, narrow down which ones you want, and even save some for posts down the line.

With so many free services for bloggers, there’s no reason to fret over time-sucking tasks. The tools above are not just great for organization, but they can up your blogging game by helping you manage and produce amazing content.

This is a guest post by Daniel Cassady who is an experienced freelance writer and frequent contributor to a blog by Benchmark Email, a global email marketing company.

© Raju PP for Technically Personal!, 2011. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us, so we can take legal action immediately. If you are on Twitter you can follow me @rajupp! | Permalink |

The issue of indexing the proxy sites which simply redirects the URL of the original page through their servers is nothing new. The issue dates back to 2007 and with the introduction of canonical tag in 2009, Google announced that the issue came to an end. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. The proxy hijacking is back and for some mysterious reason, it appears to be prevalent on the proxy sites hosted on Google’s very own app engine, by ignoring the “rel=canonical” tag.

Let me explain with an example. Over the past couple of days, I have been observing a considerable drop in organic traffic for some important keywords. Today, I pushed myself to dig deep and check what’s wrong. I was shocked to see a proxy site – suzetteklierocks.appspot.com getting ranked at the place where my blog was ranking previously. To my astonishment, I couldn’t find my own blog anywhere in the first couple of pages in Google search.

In the screenshot above, the first result is of the proxy site which has hijacked my page. This is the URL listed on Google – http://suzetteklierocks.appspot.com/techpp.com/2010/07/05/dropbox-alternatives-sync-files-online/. As you expect, this is just one of the many instances where the proxy site is ranking better than mine. The reason for not observing the huge change in traffic/revenue was that the proxy sites simply redirect to the original page, but App engine sites have a restriction on bandwidth usage per day and hence stops working towards the end of the day when they breach the limit.

A quick search for site:suzetteklierocks.appspot.com reveals more than 200,000 indexed pages for the proxy site. I do have the canonical tags on the page, which somehow is getting ignored by Google while indexing the duplicate proxy page. I am no SEO expert, and I am not sure if I am missing something here. Google’s web-spam guru, Matt Cutts has promised to have a look at the issue, and I am sure he resolves this at the earliest.

Another request to Matt and Google; There doesn’t seem to be a proper way to report sites hosted on Google app engine. Please make it easier to report them. Also, if possible, make the app engine based proxy URLs “noindex” by default.

Update: I cannot explicitly block the proxy site till I get back the SERP, since I’ll lose out the redirected traffic as well.

Update 2: I realize that I have made a mistake in the title. The right one is – “Proxy Sites REPLACING the Originals” *SIGH*

Update 3: Barry Schwartz of SEL had written about this yesterday.

Update 4: Matt Cutts was quick to act upon this as he promised. Thanks Matt!

Update 5: I’m already seeing some changes being rolled on, but the process is not complete yet.

© Raju PP for Technically Personal!, 2011. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us, so we can take legal action immediately. If you are on Twitter you can follow me @rajupp! | Permalink |