jQuery Hacks : Hiding Links inside Comments

For the past few months I have been dealing with a lot of spam in the comment section. The Blogger's inbuilt filter has stopped more than 6000 spam comments but still some slipped by . Due to this very reason I had to close the Anonymous option for commenting. But this didn't solve the problem and people with Blogger profile started to spam as well . So I have come up with a simple jQuery powered hack that hides any clickable link and just displays its text.


Demo
Try adding links in the comment below

Code

<script src='https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.3/jquery.min.js'/>
<script>  

$('.comment-content a[rel$=nofollow]').replaceWith(function(){return ($(this).text());});

</script>

Add it just before the </body> tag in the Edit HTML . In case you have already included the jQuery library , then add the code starting from Line 2 onwards.

If you want to completely remove the links from the comments , then use this code instead

<script src='https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.3/jquery.min.js'/>
<script>  

$('.comment-content a[rel$=nofollow]').hide());

</script>

This works for the Threaded Comments in Blogger , incase you want to make it work for the old Comments in Blogger , then the code is as follows

<script src='https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.3/jquery.min.js'/>
<script>  

$('.comment-body p a[rel$=nofollow]').replaceWith(function(){return ($(this).text());});

</script>

Hope this helps you in curbing the spam in your comment section and feel free to share this simple trick with your friends

How To Create a Timeless Blog

News stories and big headlines may attract attention to your blog quickly, but they go out of date quickly as well. On the other hand, the information contained in a "helpful tips" style blog lasts longer and is more likely to bring in timeless benefits to blog owners. Listed below are 4 helpful tips on how to create a timeless blog.



Avoid Mentioning Specific Brands or Versions

Of course, if you have a technology blog, this probably won't apply to you, but for all others, take care not to reference specific brands of products or specific versions of products. This advice applies most especially to technological gadgets. While you may feel tempted to review the latest version of the hottest gadget out on the market to date, rest assured that your reference will become outdated quickly, most likely as soon as the next version comes out. When visitors see your blog referencing outdated products, your content seems less relevant.

Avoid Referencing News Stories, Headlines, Political Figures or Celebrities

Again, these kinds of stories will bring visitors to your blog in an Internet stampede. Unfortunately, however, it works against you in the long run. You want to create content that's "evergreen" - always fresh - which won't go out of date within a few days, weeks or months. Before a presidential election, for example, news stories about the candidates draw an unprecedented amount of attention. A year and a half into the president's term, however, no one's going to be reading those stories. The same goes with celebrity news and other headline news stories. At the time the stories occur, everyone's scouring the Internet to find out what's going on. A month later, you'll be hearing the sound of crickets emanating from your blog because no one's reading stories that aren't relevant anymore.

Focus on Popular and Universal Themes

When you're coming up with "evergreen" content for your blog, think about popular and universal themes. Cultivate an understanding of what kind of information people always seems to be searching for. Some good timeless business-oriented themes include how to manage effectively and how to deal with stress in a positive way. People have talked about these ideas since the modern business environment came into existence, and it's likely they'll keep talking about them as long as businesses exist.

Give Advice that's Useful Regardless of Year or Season

If you want your blog to attract attention no matter what year or season it is, give advice that readers can use any time. Good examples for a home-oriented blog include effective ways to clean without chemicals and why pet owners should spay or neuter. While this information certainly would never get called cutting-edge, and it will take longer to attract readers than hot news stories, timeless information is much more likely to help you cultivate a readership and optimize your blog for SEO.

Conclusion

When creating content for your blog, resist the temptation to recycle the hottest stories on the web. Instead, work on making content that will continue to attract readers after the big news story of the week gets replaced with next week's headline. Timeless content works more effectively in the long run to build an audience and help your blog rank high with search engines.



If you would like to find out which host a site is using, you can use the WhoIsHostingThis search engine. Erik Gaandt is a freelance tech writer and SEO enthusiast. He understands the importance web hosting has on a sites search engine rank. He enjoys sharing his insights on various blogs.

6 Ways To Keep Your Blog Interesting

As you have created a blog for yourself and considering blogging, you are needed to ensure that you keep your blog interesting which will help you get more and more visitors preferably on-going visitors. In this post, I am to list down the 6 different ways to keep your blog interesting. Continue reading and figure out if your blog is good enough or not.






1. Identify The Purpose Of Your Blog

First and foremost step towards keeping your blog interesting is your primary objective behind creating your blog. It does not matter if your aim is to share valuable content or to generate traffic, once you are clear about the purpose of your objective, you need to keep moving forward and work hard to achieve success.

2. Your Blog’s Content

A blog happens to be interesting, when it is sharing worthy and useful information to its readers. In short, you; being the author of your blog will take your readers along. You need to make sure that you have unique and original content on your blog by covering exclusive topics.

3. Choosing A Topic

Choosing a topic to write on is certainly a tough task as you need to ensure that the topic you choose is interesting and exclusive to your readers. Moreover, you can also try writing about the latest market and industry trends which are yet to be discovered by others. You can even allow guest posts on your blog, and bloggers will help you contribute to the content of your blog. Also, you can consider the older topics and trends and tailor them according to the recent times. This way your readers will get to read new and interesting information that has been made available on your blog.

4. Design

While you are spending time to create unique and exclusive content for your blog, you should also spend some time choosing an exceptional design for your blog. it is imperative to avoid adding poor and clumsy designs which eventually leave your visitors searching for what they came for. You must incorporate such a design that prompt the visitors to check your site every now and then for latest updates as they liked the way you already presented your content on the blog. If you are using the WordPress platform, you can select and add several different themes that are available on the WordPress dashboard itself. Also, you can add premium and even free themes which are compatible with the latest WordPress version you are currently using for your blog.

5. Be Consistent

Keep posting on your blog frequently; and let your blog stay alive for your readers. Try to have a target which you must achieve per week. This way you will be able to engage more visitors on your blog.

6. Communicate!

You need to ensure that the content you post on your blog is useful in keeping the interest of your regular readers. Utilize the comment section of your blog to effectively communicate with them, engage your audience and share your ideas. Respond to all the comments that have been posted and do answer their queries if any asked.

Author Bio

This guest post was written by Rahul Garewal, writer and researcher for Minerabatkoder.dk.

Five Tools That Can Take Your Efforts to the Next Level

Some blog for fun, others do it for a living. No matter what side of the fence you’re on, there are certain things you must do if you want your blog to grow and start delivering results for the time you put into it. There are also tools available to make your path to success an easier road to travel.


Here are five tools that can be used to take any blog to the next level.



1. Googe Analytics

How are readers to responding to your blog efforts? There is activity to be measured beyond comments and a tool like Google Analytics can help you identify it. With Google Analytics, you can find out where your traffic is coming from, how they’re interacting with your posts, and much more. This tool is easy to implement and best of all, totally free to use. There are many tracking tools out there, but Google Analytics holds it own against the best options on both the free and paid market.

2. Facebook

Say what you want, but the power of Facebook cannot be denied. This social network is used by so more than a billion people, that you are almost certain to have an audience just waiting to be engaged. What makes Facebook so powerful outside of sheer size and reach is all the great features it gives you to work with. For example, you can set up a regular profile or a brand page. You can include links to your blog posts and if they garner interest, fans can like them or share them with friends. Integrating Facebook into the mix is all about creating more exposure for your content.

Although it has a set of unique qualities to call its own, you could easily place Twitter in the place of Facebook. Both tools offer unlimited potential for improving your blogging efforts.

3. Google Alerts

Here’s another of several Google tools that can help take your blog to that next level. Google Alerts allows you to set up email notifications that are delivered to your inbox based on your chosen keywords and phrases. This is perhaps the most versatile tool on the list and thus, one that can be used in a wide variety of ways. Following are just some of the many ways bloggers can use Google Alerts to power their efforts:

- Stay on top of the latest breaking news in their niche

- Generate ideas for fresh topics and content

- Identify similar blogs and websites

- Expand their individual network

- Watch competitors

- Research keywords

- Discover new sites to include in their link building strategy

- Monitor their brand name and reputation

Like many Google products, this one is absolutely free to use. If there is a must-have blogging tool on the list, Google Alerts would be it.

4. CloudFlare

If you have a blog that is making noise in the way of a lot of traffic and comments, your content could be at the mercy of unscrupulous thieves who want to steal and use it for themselves. This is why a tool like CloudFlare comes in handy. CloudFlare is a cloud-based platform that can protect your blog from content crooks, hackers, spammers, and a host of other threats. It also offers features that can help you improve performance and understand more about your traffic.

CloudFlare offers three premium packages, but many bloggers will find that its free plan provides adequate protection for their needs.

5. Creative Commons

Every blogger needs a tool like Creative Commons in their arsenal. Creative Commons gives you convenient access to a huge selection of images that can be used for commercial purposes and published on your blog. Of course you can pretty much nab images from anywhere, but you are taking a huge gamble with anything you have not been given permission to use. What makes Creative Commons so valuable is the fact that it allows you to retrieve content from other popular image libraries, including Flickr, Fotopedia, and Google Images

Don’t Go to Work Without Your Tools

Every blogger needs a set of tools they can rely on to simplify what can often be a very grueling process. The internet makes these applications and services easily accessible, so there really is no excuse for going to work without them. You have an endless pool to choose from, but these are a few you can never go wrong with.

What’s your favorite blogging tool these days? Don’t be a Scrooge. Share with the group!

Author Bio

This is a Guest Post by Francis Santos is a writer for Benchmark Email, a best practices email marketing company .

Decide on your Domain Wisely Before Starting Your Blog

For many a passion and for others a profession, blogging has definitely taken internet users all over the world by a storm. When one starts a blog, the primary desire is to share the knowledge with others or to make a living through it, depending on the owner of the blog and his aspirations. Whatever the reason behind starting a blog may be, it won’t turn into reality until intended audience learns about the blog.

It’s all about traffic and to achieve quality traffic for a blog, proper optimization plan is to be followed. Search Engine Optimization plan for a blog consists of on-page and off-page optimization part. Off-page optimization is more related to quality link building for the blog or inner pages. As far as on-page optimization is concerned, it starts right from buying the domain for your blog, certain other parts include title of your blog, Meta tags, Meta description etc.

Why are domains important?

Domains can give your blog a competitive advantage over your competitors. Though ultimately all depends on the content of the blog, if the primary keyword you want to rank for is there in your domain, you are one step ahead in the race. For search engines, such a blog is more relevant to the keyword. The same applies to the visitors of the blog. If they search for a keyword and see that your blog domain contains the keyword in its entirety, he will be prompted to think that your blog is more relevant than others.

How to choose the domain for your blog?

Once you have figured out the primary keyword for your blog, try to search for that domain in the different domain providers such as Yahoo Domain, GoDaddy, NameCheap etc. There are plenty of discount coupons available, so don’t worry about the price  .

What if you don’t get the exact keyword as your domain? Well, go for something similar then. Suppose, the keyword you want to rank for is Midphase hosting discount coupons midphasehostingdiscountcoupons is not available, be it com, org or net (Please avoid info, in general, there is no proof that info domains don’t work, but, my personal experience has been bitter so I ask people to refrain). In such case, add a suffix to the keyword and you should do fine. So, yes midphasehostingdiscountcouponsforyou works perfectly. Mind it, don’t add a prefix and then finalize your domain, it’s strictly prohibited.

Another caution point, don’t use hyphens or numbers in your domain, they somehow look spammy.

I put pretty emphasis to this while choosing the domain. I generally decide to buy domains that are quite old. A domain that had never expired (Don’t get lured by the fancy PageRank, they are often earned through some redirection) should add a natural boost to your ranking. Search engines love domains that are aged because they think those have some sort of authority in the relevant niche. Snapnames, ExpiredDomains are some good sites to buy aged domains.

Other points to consider

Make sure that your domain name is not offensive for anyone or a particular community.

Make sure the suffix you add to the keyword while choosing the domain is something that makes sense, for example, just don’t put an x at the end. Many webmasters used to follow this earlier, but with a more vigilant Google, this will not work now.

If you are buying an existing domain, check out the whois records carefully. It should never have been banned or belonged to some banned organization. This may ruin your blog’s chances of shining.

To conclude with, choosing a perfect domain for your blog has become even more important after the recent Panda and Penguin updates launched by Google. Well, your blog will only flourish if it is liked by users and has quality content but, a good domain is the very first step. Don’t take your first step wrong, you may repent later!

Author Bio

This is a guest post and the views of the author do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of this site. The author Costea loves to write about blogging, internet marketing and social media promotional strategies. He is also an occasional contributor to a site that makes available yahoo domain name coupon and midphase coupon codes for its visitors. If you want to read more about Yahoo domain name coupon or midphase coupon codes, please click here.

Google Web Fonts in Blogger

Web fonts have been around since the CSS2 specification came out ,but in the recent years there has been a huge adoption due to lots of services coming up to cater to the users needs. One of the first on the scene was Typekit and was followed by lots of others. But they were all paid services and hence out of reach of the many ,then came Google Web Fonts and rest is history. Not only was it free but being hosted at Google's servers it was the most reliable of them all. In this tutorial we will learn how to embed Google Web Fonts in Blogger .



Getting started
There are mainly two ways to embed Google Web Fonts into your blog , firstly you can simply use the Template Designer or you can include the specific font related Style-sheet directly to your template .


Using the Template Designer


Video Tutorial 

Steps

1. In your Blogger Dashboard ,go to the Template page of the specific blog



2. Click the Customise button present just adjacent to the Edit HTML button



3. In the Template Designer , go to the Advanced Tab and you are now free to select the fonts for the various parts of your blog like Page Text , Blog Title ,etc



Cons
- You don't have access to all the fonts present in the Google Web Fonts Directory. Only a selected few are included in the Blogger's Template Designer

- An extra bit of JavaScript is added which is way more than the simple stylesheet added in the other method

<script type="text/javascript">
if (navigator.userAgent.indexOf('MSIE 6') == -1) {
  WebFontConfig = {
    google: { families: [ 'Pacifico' ],
    api: 'http://themes.googleusercontent.com/fonts/css?kit=YwEG9hvZkp55xA2jQoejfg'
    },
    loading: function() {
      if (window.jstiming) window.jstiming.load.tick('webfontLoading');
    },
    active: function() {
      if (window.jstiming) window.jstiming.load.tick('webfontActive');
    }
  };
  (function() {
    var wf = document.createElement('script');
    wf.src = '//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/webfont/1/webfont.js';
    wf.type = 'text/javascript';
    wf.async = 'true';
    var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
    s.parentNode.insertBefore(wf, s);
  })();
} else {
  document.documentElement.className = 'wf-inactive';
}
</script>

-This might not work if you are using a highly customized template the reason being the template designer would have removed the necessary CSS variables required for this to work. If you facing this problem then follow the other method below

Pros
- Simple to implement

- Surprisingly faster than the other method even though extra JavaScript is added

The Style-Sheet method

This requires a bit of fiddling with the Edit HTML of the Blog but is the cleaner of the two. I suggest that you follow this method

Video Tutorial 

Steps

1. Go to Google Web Fonts and browse through the various fonts . Once you have selected which font to use , click the Quick Use Button just in the right hand side.



2. Now scroll down a bit and you will see a link tag code , copy this code



3. Now in the Blogger Dashboard ,go to the Template page of the specific blog



4. Click the Edit HTML button present just adjacent to the Customise button



5. Paste the code you copied just after the <head> tag



6. Now to add the CSS to use this font, just before the ]]></b:skin> tag

 h1 {
font-family: THE-WEB-FONT-FAMILY-NAME-YOU-EMBED ;
}

Embedding fonts is now a easy task, just don't overdo it, can have some negative effects Feel free to ask problems or questions related to this tutorial in the comments below

How To Sell Your Own Products On Your Blog

More and more people are taking up selling products on their blog to beat the job economy. Earning through one’s blog has become a method of salvation for many who’ve faced the pink slip. It’s not as easy as it sounds, but if you manage to get the hang of it, you can use your blog to sell products that you create, minus the overheads of an offline business. Here’s how.


Switch From Being A Blogger To Being An Entrepreneur

Once you’re ready with a product that’s priced perfectly and you’re ready to sell, you’re no longer just a blogger. If your core focus so far has been on keeping your blog updated and fresh, now the focus has to shift to selling your product. People will identify you not just with your blog and its content, but with your product.

Take Your Role Seriously

 You’re not employed by an organization as a salesperson, with a list of leads to convert and a list of rules to follow. With your own blog and your own product, you don’t have this luxury. If you fail, your product fails. So take your role as salesperson, marketer and entrepreneur seriously, and be ready to back up your product with facts and accurate information.

Identify Your Buying Audience

Your present audience may buy your product out of loyalty or a feeling of obligation, but that’s not enough. You need to identify the right buying audience.

Search Discussion Forums

Search for discussion forums, Twitter and Facebook groups for communities that buy and enjoy similar products. Join these groups and take part in their discussions. Be sure to link your product pages and talk about your products and their features on these forums.

Look Up Your Competitors

 Look up competing blogs that offer products that are similar or in the same niche. Exchange links with these bloggers and engage their audiences. By exposing your blog to other blog’s audiences, you might succeed in converting some of them into your customers.

Take Up Guest Posting With A Vengeance

Most of your buying audience will be on unrelated sites. You have to get their attention and demonstrate the value of what you have to offer. Submit guest posts to large, well-established blogs in your niche area. Be sure you’re your posts will reach a diverse audience which knows what it wants

Check If You Can Sell Your Products On Other Blogs

You can offer to promote another blogger’s blog, or even help sell their products, if they will allow you to sell yours on their blogs. It’s a mutual bargain, one that benefits both blogs. This works especially well if the other blog’s readers fit your buying audience profile. Look for authority blogs, especially those that have been around for a long time. Work out mutually beneficial deals – the other blogger must also find a good value by associating with you.

Offer Something Free

 Promote a free product trial, or even a free sample product on various media. Use your social media accounts, social networking sites, discussion forums and email newsletters to publicize and promote your offer. Not many people can resist an offer of something free; especially if it’s something they want.

Do Offsite Campaigning

People still read newspapers and they still watch TV and listen to radio. Don’t ignore these offsite promotional opportunities that will help you find customers. Buy Ad space in newspaper and provide your contact number so that people can directly call you for enquiries.

Get More People To Sign Up For Your Email List

As you locate more and more of your buying audience, get them to sign up for your email list. This is not easy unless you impress them with your guest posts, your blog’s content and network with them through social media and discussion forums. Be sure to offer a freebie, or unique privileges to tempt people to sign up.

Be Choosy About The Promotions You Use

Put your product head and shoulders above others. You don’t want to promote your product in some used space where the mediocre players hang. Demonstrate the confidence you have in your product’s superiority. Select promotional vehicles based on this exclusivity that you want to project.

See Your Blog As Just Another Vehicle For Sales

 You can sell your products through other blogs, other product sites, through affiliate partners and so on. The primary thing to understand is that your blog is another vehicle for sales, not the center of your product universe. Use your blog’s biggest asset, its content, to market your products. Write posts on industry trade secrets and offer special promotions for readers who contribute. Tie your offer to your blog’s topic. Create special community pages that are exclusive to your email subscribers and create promotional offers especially for them.

Author Bio
This is a guest post by Dean of website optimization company Invesp. Invesp specializes in offering conversion rate optimization and landing page optimization services too !

10 Productivity Tools for Bloggers

Any quick search of Google, Bing or Yahoo will quickly throw up dozens, if not hundreds, of productivity tools for bloggers (and website owners in general). Sifting through them can be quite troublesome and the sheer number of tools makes it overwhelming to make a decision on which ones to use and makes it impossible to test them all (while still blogging). In this article we will list 10 top productivity tools for bloggers.



1. LastPass
LastPass allows users to manage username and password combinations for all their sites. With most browsers, users can save their usernames and passwords, so they automatically log in when accessing a particular website, but is it secure? And what if you have multiple user IDs for a single website? Furthermore, sometimes these sites drop the automatic login and made you do it again. With LastPass you store each and every username-password combination on the secure site and use it to access your favourite sites. The application is downloadable to all computers and encrypts your data to protect your passwords from hackers.


2. Let’s Crate


Let’s Crate builds upon ideas such as Dropbox and SugarSync. With those sites, in order to share information, people need to sign in and to create a profile. This can be tiresome if, as someone wanting to share information quickly, you have to wait for people to create profiles or have to encourage them to do so. Let’s Crate evades this problem by not requiring anyone to make a profile, not even the person doing the sharing. Simply put the document into the box on the landing page and Let’s Crate will create a link you can share, embed in a blog post or send through email. There is an option for you to create an account to store information if you so wish, but the service works just as fine without an account.


3. Text Expander


As anyone who writes a lot or types a lot knows, fingers get tired. One major drag on writing is having to type the same text over and over again. For example, imagine running an insurance news site. You may have some terms and conditions you repeat often. Sure, it can be copy and pasted into place leting your customers know the conditions your cheapest home insurance is offered with, but why not have some shortcuts, which drop a chunk of text exactly where you want it? This protects you from some of the risk making a mistake with your insurance terms and conditions would have as well as making your life easier. This is the role of Text Expander. The tool allows you to create a snippet, which is coded, so that when you type it into an email, document or blog post, Text Expander automatically dumps the rest of the snippet in for you.

4. SimpleNote / Evernote

 These two sites perform the same duties, so it is better to use one or the other. Their job is not necessarily to remind yourself to do something, but perform the same function as writing in the margins of a book or bending the corner of a magazine page back, so you can find it again. They differ from bookmarking sites like Digg or StumbleUpon by allowing you to make notes on a site and then organize those notes. SimpleNote also includes a tagging system, which aids archiving.

5. Blog Desk

How many of us have more than one blog? How many of those are on different blogging platforms? Blogdesk does what it says on the tin. It is a multipurpose blogging platform, which allows you to build professional and/or personal blog posts then using a one-click system, gives you the option of posting the entry on any or all of the blogging platforms you have linked to the service. This includes images, dictionaries and tag generators.

6. Skitch

 Skitch is a combination of Evernote/SimpleNote and Windows’ Snipping Tool. Basically it is a tool for taking screenshots and then annotating them. It also has a social function allowing users to share those screenshots. It has recently been bought by Evernote, so expect it to tie in more in future.

7. Linkdip

This is a nice and relatively new site, aimed at aiding link building. As many blog and website creators know, there are good links and bad links. Linkdip has decided to turn linking into a form of social networking. Users gain points by liking or adding a +1, mentioning or tweeting links. Once points have been accrued the user can then ask other people to like, +1 or tweet their own links.

8. Rapportive

 This modern world is hyperlinked and ever changing. We are constantly interacting with new people and sometimes it can be a struggle to remember who is who, what your relationship is to them business or social wise and their history. Rapportive solves this problem for Gmail users. The Chrome extension provides you with data from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other sources (providing your correspondent is on those sites of course) to help you when writing an email to them.

9. Remember the Milk

There are a rash of memory aiding websites out there like Coolender, which turns your ‘do not forget’ notes into an actual calendar and Do It Tomorrow, which creates a virtual diary, which easily allows users to move tasks from one day to the next. Remember the Milk is a website, which performs the same function. Users are free to sign up and use the site to manage tasks, increase workflow, access a phone or google calendar, and to receive SMS or IM reminders for priority tasks.

10. Oh Life

 Oh Life builds on the daily idea of the workflow applications and sites mentioned above. The purpose of this aid is to help you organize your thoughts more. Oh Life’s idea is simple. At the end of the day the service will send you an email. It will ask a single question: “how did your day go?” When replying to the message, you mention what you did, what you need to do the next day and so on, which is all then turned into an online journal. The next day you can access the journal to remind you of what needs doing.


Feel free to share any Tool/App that you have been using and has improved your Blogging process as a whole in the comments below

Author Bio


This is a Guest Post by Imogen Reed who is an active freelance writer and President of the Moon Appreciation Society. You can find her on Google+.

Promoting Your Blog through Image Sharing Sites: A Wonderful Idea

Images indeed speak louder than words. This applies to a blog as well! Recent statistics have proven that readers generally prefer to read articles that contain images more than just plain text. No wonder that photo sharing websites, these days, are the ones that enjoy huge traffic. People share their images, upload the ones they like & also put their comments if they feel so.


The sharing concept for the latest rage among photo sharing sites – Pinterest is a bit different though. Here you pin the images you like and more pins an image gather, more popular it is. If an image gets enough pins or shares, the same is bound to get viral. Millions of people visit these image sharing sites every day and if your image feature in the homepage, you can easily imagine what amount of traffic you can enjoy!



How to upload the image?


It’s just not about selecting your picture and uploading the same. Remember one thing, hundreds, if not thousands of pictures are uploaded in these image sharing sites every day, but to attract real traffic, the image should get some popularity first.


Don’t use copyrighted image


Don’t use a copyrighted image downloaded from Google Images or any other source. This is nothing but violation of law and you may get into troubled waters sooner than you would have thought. Try to use a copyright free image always if possible. Unless you are really tight on budget, a better idea will be to buy stock images exclusively from sites such as Istockphoto or ThinkStockPhotos. There are plenty of discount coupon codes available as well, so you won’t end up spending much. You will have plenty of options to choose from and most importantly, you will have some exclusive images to share and none else would be sharing the same (Unless they steal from you after you upload the image in one photo sharing site).


Choose images wisely


Choose your picture wisely. Think what post in your blog you would like to promote and then go for the image. Suppose, if you have a blog post stating how one can acquire muscles quickly. Some suitable images to share will be: Celebrities with muscular body, before-after pictures, muscle building training equipment etc. I hope you have an idea now? 

Note: Using Images in blog posts is a sure short way to get your point across to the readers and even get more traffic through various Image Sharing Sites and even search engines ! With this said finding quality images is a tedious task and  absence of these can badly effect your blog's prospects. To solve this problem we in partnership with MightyDeals bring for you 2000+ Royalty Free Images at a never before price.

On page optimization of the shared image


Now, comes the on page optimization part! Use proper title and description while uploading your image. If the photo sharing site facilitates, include the keyword you wish to rank for in the alt tag of the uploaded image. Put the keyword in description and title, but just don’t stuff it or overuse to avoid looking spammy. You can also use the tags feature to add the relevant keywords of your choice.


Link to your blog


The most important part isn’t it? However, don’t just add the same link in all the images. Rather, try to blend and link to different inner pages. Also, upload different images in different photo sharing sites. It is better to use different user names as well; it will help you to avoid Google Footprint.


Always follow up


If your picture gets popular, it is bound to get shares and comments. Don’t stick to sharing your own images only, share the ones others upload as well (It looks natural). If someone leaves comment in your picture, try to follow up the same. You can even add that user as friend for a regular. Be active and always respond to the questions asked, in no time you will become popular and get some loyal readers for your blog!


Best Photo Sharing Sites


This is entirely based on my personal experience, but, I believe the top 5 image sharing sites are: Photobucket, Pinterest, Zoomr, Picasa and Flickr. Each of these is easy to use. The upload technique and usage is almost similar, however, in case of any problems, just check out the FAQs.





Marketing a website is getting costlier with each passing day and under these circumstances, using the image sharing sites is nothing but a wise idea. If you haven’t got the time, you can hire a Virtual Assistant as well; it’s just a matter of an hour or so every day. The only other cost to be incurred will be for the stock photos you would buy.


It’s important to follow the latest trend in Internet Marketing industry. Traditional techniques, if implemented well, always works, however, it does not harm to try out new techniques either, particularly, when the implementation is neither costly, nor time-consuming.

Author Bio

This is a guest post by Costea who loves to write about latest internet marketing trends. He is currently contributing to a site sharing istock photo promotional code and promo code for thinkstock. These discount coupons from Istockphoto and ThinkStockPhotos will help you save some cash when you decide to buy royalty free stock images online.

Why Guest Posting is the Best Link Building Strategy

Link building strategies have several facets. Several strategies are hailed, one such strategy is guest posting. Google is a widely used search engine. Therefore it is common sense to rank over Google. However, Google has likes and dislikes for links. For instance, links built through a spam website is frowned upon by Google. On the other hand, links gained through authority sites are loved. In the past, spam link building provided instant results. Unfortunately, they no longer are valid. The recent Penguin update crushed the remaining hope of spam link building. However, some spammy sites still rank higher but their positions & rank will drop in future.

Why Guest posting should be used for link building?

Guest posting is effective in every way. Through guest posting you not only build natural links but also accumulate relevant readers for your site. Some of the benefits are:

Increase of rank position over Google

 Generally, guest posting is done on high authority sites (in most cases). Links gained through these sites carry greater weight than any other site. Let us say your competitor ranks higher with several thousand links. In that case, you can rank higher with few quality links. Of course, I cannot provide the exact numbers. However, links gained through guest posting will assist in better rank positions for keywords in a short term.

Real Example: I started a forex site in April 2012. For a certain page I wanted it to rank for the keyword ‘forex no deposit bonus’. I chose guest posting for link building. At present the page ranks 12th for the keyword. Google for the keyword and try finding for blog named ‘zarrylym’s forex’. Note: Other factors also went into ranking of the page but most help came through guest posting.

Permanent Links through Guest Posts

Links gained through guest blogging are permanent. There is no recurring expense that needs to be spent to keep the link. The SEO juice through the link will vouch for your site. In other link building strategies, the link may or may not be permanent.

Needn’t Fear Algorithm changes

 Many Internet Marketers and Webmasters fear every time Google undergoes an algorithm change. If guest posting was your link building strategy then you do not have to fear. No matter what, guest post links will always stay and provide better ranking. A very rare case scenario would be the site on which you guest posted gets in some problem (but that rarely happens as they are generally high quality)

Increases Readership

When you guest post on a site readers will try to find more about you. Naturally, they will land on your site where more can be learnt about you. Soon they will be part of your readers. So apart from gaining links, you also get readership with guest posting.

Increases Awareness

 Internet is immense in size. Not all sites fall into lime light. Few of the sites that compete and show their heads are spoken and blogged about. For a newly built site that requires attention guest posting is the right choice. For example, let us say you have a newly built site on Affiliate Marketing. Find other authority sites in the same niche. Contact the admin and propose to Guest post. Continuing the same procedure with other sites will soon increase the awareness of your blog.

Apart from ranking higher in search engines, you also get the above benefits with guest posting. So Will you next time consider guest posting as your priority when it comes to link building or not ?

Author Bio

Richie Richardson is an Internet Marketer and loves to blog about it. At present he is working on his forex blog and writes on TradeFort review. He also discusses about forex no deposit bonus 2012 and other related topics.

5 Reasons Why Your Blog Won’t Attract Subscribers

Should you build mailing list in your blog? Yes, you should. However, there is a common problem many bloggers experience when they build mailing list for their blog. What is it? It’s about how difficult it is to persuade their readers to subscribe to their mailing list. You may experience the same problem. So, you have to understand about the reasons why your blog readers don’t want to subscribe to your blog mailing list. Here are 5 reasons why your blog won’t attract subscribers

1. You don’t differentiate yourself

As you may already know, there are thousands upon thousands of blogs out there, and of course, they’re all trying to attract subscribers and traffic. Now, you have a single blog which is trying to attract subscribers too. How can you make your audience recognize your blog? How can you make your audience to cling to your blog and follow your blog instead of other blogs? The answer is to make your blog unique. You have to make your blog different from other blogs. If you can do this, you will be able to attract subscribers to your blog easily. If your blog is seen as the same old blog that people already see numerous times, you can’t easily attract traffic to your blog, let alone build mailing list in it.

2. You don’t have reputation

In blogging, reputation is everything. If you have reputation, people will just flocking on your blog all day. And they will subscribe. And they will buy something from you. Reputation is all that matters. If you are unable to attract subscribers to your blog, that’s because your blog has no reputation. And this is what you should start building from now.

3. You don’t offer something valuable

There is always a price for something that you want get. If you want to get subscribers, you have to pay the “fair price” for it. You need to offer something valuable that has more value than your reader’s email address. If you neglect the importance of this part, you’ll have difficulty to build a big mailing list on your blog. Offer something free that will give great value to your readers, and they’ll gladly exchange their email address for it.

4. You aren’t persistent enough

Persistence is the key to build your blog mailing list. In attracting subscribers, persistence is the key. You have to let your blog readers know that you want them to subscribe to your blog’s mailing list. And you have to tell them about this over and over—in your blog posts, in your blog comments, in your videos, and so on.

5. You don’t offer more than your competitors

People always want something more. Look at your competitors—other bloggers that are building big mailing list. What do they offer to their subscribers? If you can see carefully, they are offering massive value in exchange for their readers’ subscription. Why are they doing this? That’s because they understand the value of their blog subscribers. What you need to do is to offer more than your competitors are offering to their subscribers. Add more value to your offer, and you will find significant increase in your subscription rate.


Those are the reasons why your blog won’t attract subscribers. Make sure to avoid those things if you want to attract massive subscribers to your blog.

Author Bio

This is a Guest Post by Kashish Jain who is a young blogger from India. He loves to write about the technology updates around the world. Recently an article on BloggingTips grabbed his attention. These days he is busy writing articles on  Polity of India.