Improve your PageRank by optimizing internal links

PageRank is widely considered as important factor for your blog or webpage to improve its position in the Search Engines results. It is calculated according to the number of external links which point to your pages, but also according to the internal links, could be identified on your site.
LinkSpirit is open source freeware, specialized in managing and optimization of internal links.
It will help you to:

• Calculate and optimize the internal distribution of your PageRank.
• Calculate PageRank lost by the bad exploitation of your internal links.
• Check your internal links, detect the dead links and perform manual or auto-correction of these links.
• Identify the orphan pages and of pages hidden by the "robots" instruction or by the robots.txt file.
• Identify the file names not respecting HTML standards (because of accents or spaces) and fix these names.
• Find out the links using the wrong character ’ instead of / and perform autocorrection of these links.
• Check the syntax of your "robots.txt" file, create or edit this file using an assistant.
• Edit the code of your pages in text mode.
• Edit the "robots" meta tag.

Developers’ website: http://www.rankspirit.com/downloadprceng.php

Direct link for software downloading: http://www.ziddu.com/download/1811084/link_spirit.zip.html

Live Traffic Widget for your Blog - FEEDJIT

Feedjit (http://feedjit.com/) is offering a widget that provides important information about who is visiting your blog or website. An entry is posted to the widget every time a person arrives at your website and again when the person leaves. Feedjit entries list referring web site where your visitors came from, what was their post of interest, and their geographical location. To visualize the gadget, Feedjit also posts a little flag near every entry to indicate what country each visitor is from. Feedjit also offers a separate map widget that shows the locations of the last 100 visitors to your website.

The offered widgets are all free and you do not need to register to get them for your blog or website. They are also extremely lightweight and won’t slow your site down.

If you’re a Blogger or Typepad user you can install any of the widgets with one click. If you use a different blogging platform or website, you can simply cut and paste the provided script into your blog template or website HTML. Feedjit will appear in the position you paste the script.

You can choose from four types of the Widget to install:

1. Live Traffic Feed
2. Live Traffic Map
3. Live Recommended Reading
4. Live Page Popularity

Take a glance on how the Widget (Live Traffic Feed) looks on the page (screen shot is take from my blog http://freeware4review.blogspot.com)

FEEDJIT

Windows Live Writer from Microsoft for Blog Desktop Publishing

By many bloggers, Windows Live Writer (WLW) is regarded as the best free blogging software on the market. It is a Microsoft product and is strongly supported and maintained by the software giant.
WLW has lots of features that put it aside among desktop freeware blogging applications. Among the main application features are:

• Supports multiple blog platforms, including Windows Live Spaces, SharePoint, Wordpress, Blogger and many others.
• Ability to compel your blog with easy. You can insert photos and videos, maps, tags and lots of other cool content, all in no time.
• Powerful editing features include tables, spell checker, and quick hyperlinks.
• You can preview your publication before you post. Since the software enables true WYSIWYG blog authoring, it will show you exactly what your blog entry will look like before you post it, using your blog’s templates and formatting.
• You can compose your entries while being offline, and later publish them, when you get back online.
• Windows Live Writer is currently available in 6 different languages.

Developer’s Home Page: http://get.live.com/writer/overview
Direct Link for downloading: http://www.ziddu.com/download/1860119/WWL0057.exe.html

WLW Screen

How to blog and earn money

If you enjoy writing and blogging and feel passionate about something. You can earn some money out of it as well. Even if you are not very comfortable with writing, you would enjoy the informal behaivor of blogging and will find it fun soon.

Well the key here is to choose the topic that you enjoy the most and feel passionate about. That ways you can learn about it more as you search, blog, answer people's comments. Moreover blogging for long hauls may not be possible on topics ou dont find interesting yourself. It might become and overkill or burden to blog about such stuff in long run.

I started with compiling information about stuff that i used to search here and there and place them in a single place for my own reference. I started to enjoy writing and blogging a lot so I started few blogs based out of my interest and monetized them with adsense and other affiliates. Monetizing the blogs turned out to be the best for me. I am pretty happy with the earnings and response till now.

If you would like to know how to create your own blog, here is a step by step tutorial with pictures. Create your first Blog

Ok now what is adsense and affiliates. Adsense is a contxual advertising program that places ads on your blog or site that suits the contents and you get paid when the visitors click them. Affiliates are refferal ads and you earn when some one joins them.

If you would like to know how to put adsense on your blog, here is a step-by-step tutorial with pictures:How to place adsense ads on your blog

How do you get paid with adsense now? Your earnings keep accumulating for each month till you reach 100$ in your earnings. Once you reach 100$ mark your account is sent out for verification and you get the check in your local currency at your residence address the following month.

But be careful If there is any violation in the adsense policy then your account will be banned and all your earnings will be dropped. So DO NOT violate adsense policies. Even if the earnings are low initially, be patient and don't be desperate to violate the policies.

Since I had chosen topics that I enjoy, so writing about them didn't put me off even when initially the results were slow, the visitors and readers were less and earnings were small. But as it all grew in couple of months, and am now earnings a decent amount.

I received my first check from google adsense after 2 months of hardwork, and have been receiving regular checks every month ever since.

source:
http://homejobsblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/how-to-blog-and-earn-money.html

adsense, advertising, blogging, earn money, generate money, make money, monetize blog

Link Exchange ?

Hi, thanks for stopping by, We love to get your messages, including the link exchange requests, but in order to maintain a PR standard, we are only considering link exchange with blogs/sites with PageRank of at least 2 or above. So, Here's the link in case you want to add our link to your pages :

<a href="http://zerodollarchallenge.blogspot.com" title="Free Blog Things & Blog Stuff">Free Blog Things & Blog Stuff</a>

Feel free to contact us at

How to Verify your Site to Google

These directions are for people using a self hosted blog or website. These directions are not for those using Blogger blogs but I can do a post about verifying a blogger blog on Google if requested.

A friend is having trouble verifying his wordpress blog and the simplest way to help him is to just show him.

If you have a self hosted site then this is the fastest and easiest method for verifying your ownership to Google. You have two choices for verification; add a Meta Tag to your site or add a html file. Adding the html file is easier as you don't have to understand code - you just have to know how to upload a file.

Example of a Meta Tag



Example of a html file



How to Verify your site using a html file.

Please click images to enlarge and read the directions. Just follow these steps and your site will be verified in a few minutes.













Cheers,

Griz

How to Remove Date and Author on Blogger Posts

Just a quick one here. I get asked this a lot - "How can I get rid of the date on my Blogger posts?" and equally "How can I remove my name from Blogger posts".

Both of these tasks can be done at the same time and is simple to do.



Login to Layout and Page Elements.



The Blog Posts Edit button will bring up the following screen. Just select the items you wish to show on your posts by checking the boxes.



I turned off several items and now the post looks like this...



And that is all there is too it.

Cheers

Griz

Privacy Policy

Update April 2009 - Privacy Policy

This website/blog uses third-party advertising companies to serve ads when visiting this site. These third parties may collect and use information (but not your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, you can visit Google's Advertising and Privacy page.

If you wish to opt out of Advertising companies tracking and tailoring advertisements to your surfing patterns you may do so at Network Advertising Initiative.

Google uses the Doubleclick DART cookie to serve ads across it's Adsense network and you can get further information regarding the DART cookie at Doubleclick as well as opt out options at Google's Privacy Center



Privacy


I respect your privacy and I am committed to safeguarding your privacy while online at this site beginner-blogger-basics.blogspot.com The following discloses how I gather and disseminate information for this Blog.


RSS Feeds and Email Updates


If a user wishes to subscribe to my RSS Feeds or Email Updates (powered by Feedburner), I ask for contact information such as name and email address. Users may opt-out of these communications at any time. Your personal information will never be sold or given to a third party. (You will never be spammed by me - ever)


Log Files and Stats


Like most blogging platforms I use log files, in this case Statcounter. This stores information such as internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring, exit and visited pages, platform used, date/time stamp, track user’s movement in the whole, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. IP addresses etc. are not linked to personally identifiable information.


Cookies


A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user’s computer tied to information about the user. This blog doesn't use cookies. However, some of my business partners use cookies on this site (for example - advertisers). I can't access or control these cookies once the advertisers have set them.


Links


This Blog contains links to other sites. Please be aware that I am not responsible for the privacy practices of these other sites. I suggest my users to be aware of this when they leave this blog and to read the privacy statements of each and every site that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this Blog.


Advertisers


I use outside ad companies to display ads on this blog. These ads may contain cookies and are collected by the advertising companies and I do not have access to this information. I work with the following advertising companies: Google Adsense, ROI Rocket, Project Payday. Please check the advertisers websites for respective privacy policies.


Contact Information


If you have any questions or concerns please contact Grizzly Brears at brears@mts.net. This privacy policy updated March 2008

Twingly delivers spam-free blogs search results

With growing popularity of blogging, there is inevitable parallel growth of the spam blogs sometimes called splogs. These are artificially (and mostly automatically) created weblog sites, used to promote affiliated websites or to increase the search engine rankings of associated sites. The purpose of a splog can be to increase the PageRank or backlink portfolio of affiliate websites, to artificially inflate paid ad impressions from visitors, and/or use the blog as a link outlet to get new sites indexed. Spam blogs are usually a type of scraper site, where content is often either inauthentic text or merely stolen from other websites. These blogs usually contain a high number of links to sites associated with the splog creator which are often disreputable or otherwise useless websites.
All the responsible organizations like blogging platform providers or affiliate marketing companies are doing their best to weed out the splogs from the blogosphere, however, the sploggers, equipped with automatic software and modern techniques, are able to generate new splogs in stead of removed in no time. Unfortunately, readers are suffering from splogs as well. When you have to pass through several splogs, looking for information, before you get to the real blog, you waste your time, you loose your money, and the real blog ranking and visibility can be diminished as well because of the “splog competitors”.
This problem is addressed by Swedish company Twingly, promising to deliver spam-free search results. In June, it opened up its blog search engine to the public. At present, it offers two search options: regular search and spam-free search; the latter is still in beta testing. It now covers 30 million blogs, and results can be sorted by authority (number of incoming links) or most recent posts. A spam-free search option only brings back results from the hundreds of thousands of white-list blogs known to be real.
"The traditional way of building a spam-free index is to remove spam blogs as they are discovered, but we are starting from scratch, only adding spam-free blogs to the index," said Martin Källström, CEO at Twingly. The benefit is better results; the drawback is a longer development phase. Before ending the beta phase, Twingly wants the spam-free index to include several million blogs. "At that point the plan is to remove the regular search option," he said.
To keep spam out, Twingly uses its own algorithm. One thing its algorithm does when adding a new a blog to the index is look at other blogs it links to. Linking to other known spam-producing blogs is usually a bad thing. Combating spam has become a must for search companies, according to Källström. Since spam blogs are now considered to stand for the majority of the blog posts worldwide, traditional search engines are becoming useless.
Check Twingly search results: http://www.twingly.com/
Bloggers might consider ping Twingly to include their blogs in the trusted database.
To promote its search engine among bloggers, Twingly developed and distributes freely an attractive screensaver, visualizing the global blog activity in real time. Forget RSS readers where you see only what you’re interested in. With Twingly screensaver you get a 24/7 stream of all (viewer discretion advised) blog activity, straight to your screen.
Video presentation of the Twingy Screensaver:

Additional Reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splog
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/040308-swedes-hope-to-keep-spam.html
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/12/twingly-blog-search-engine-now-public-with-widgets/

How to Add a No-Follow Tag to Your Links

Create No-Follow Links, Target Blank Links, Hypertext Links and Quick Links on Blogger

Here is a quick demonstartion of how to add the rel="nofollow" tag to your outbound links. This tag should be added to any links you have on your page that points elsewhere and where you don't want to send any Google juice (pagerank). There are many instances when you don't want to pass Pagerank to other sites; the more links you have passing juice the less authority each link gets. If you assume that you have a total of 1 unit of juice to give and send out 100 links then each link will only have 1/100 of the juice available. If you only send out 1 link then that link will be 100% juice. Keep in mind that the less you link out the better so don't blead excess link juice.

If you are promoting affiliate products (Banners or Text ads) then use the no-follow tag - why give them PR?

If you are selling advertising on your site you must use the no-follow tag - Google does not allow you to sell PR so never put paid links on site without the tag. Google will strip you of your own PR if they catch you selling links without the no-follow attribute.

If you have navigation links to pages like "About", "Contact Us" etc then don't waste juice on these links - use the no-follow.

If you write posts and link elsewhere then decide whether you wish to pass juice on to the sites you link to. Some you will (friends who you wish to help) and some you won't.

How to create a no-follow Link

Here is a standard hypertext link. (Click Image to Enlarge)



and this is what it looks like when the code is added to your blog.

Make Money for Beginners


There are several things we can do to a standard hypertext link;

We can make the Anchor text more useful by changing the keywords to be relevant to the site we are linking to. This is for sending do-follow links to sites that you want to help out. In this case my other site will benefit more if I use "make money online" in the anchor text as that is a term I want to rank well for in the search engines. (Click to Enlarge)




And the result looks like this;

Make Money Online

You will notice that both hypertext links above will take you to the same place - the home page of my MMO blog when clicked. The difference is that Google will count the link as a vote for "make money for beginners" in the first link and count the link as a vote for "make money online" in the second link. Both links pass pagerank to the other blog. The "vote" means that Google will rank me in the serp's (the search engine results pages) for whatever terms are used in the anchor text. I will get ranked for both terms thanks to these two links. The more sites linking to me using these terms the higher I will rank in the serp's. Sites linking to me with higher PR (pagerank) will boost me higher in the rankings.

Now let's say we are promoting a product with an affiliate link. I will use a real example. I am currently promoting a program looking for new publishers in order to give away free magazines among other things. The program will pay me for every free magazine I give away. For the month of July 2008 they will also give $50 to every site that promotes their service. The program is called RevResponse.

In this case I want to link to the site with my affiliate link but I do not want to send them any juice or pagerank.

I do this by adding a no-follow tag to the hypertext link - like so... (Click to Enlarge)



And this is what the link looks like. If you aren't using the Search Status plug in for Firefox then you will see what looks like a normal link - you can't tell if it is a no-follow link or not. If you install the plug in from Search Status then you will see a pink box around all no-follow links.

RevResponse



How to Create a Hypertext Link Quickly on Blogger

1) Highlight the word or words you want in the anchor text.

2) Click the "Link Icon" in the editor.

3) Copy/Paste the url for the site you are linking to in the pop up box that appears.

4) Click OK and the link is created.

5) You will have to do a quick edit on the link if you want it no-followed.

See the screenshots below - click to enlarge.









If you want the hypertext link to open in a new tab then you can add another tag to the link - target="_blank" This is useful if I don't want people leaving my page when they click a link - like the RevResponse link. To do this just add the target="_blank" tag to the code.





Here is the new link to Revresponse - you will find the link above opens in this tab and the link below will open in a new tab.

RevResponse

And that is all there is to creating Hypertext Links.

Cheers,

Griz

Contact Us

Blog Comics

Make your blogging more fun, by giving your visitors reason to smile. Put some funny Blog Comics on your blog using a free service from Blaugh.com

Blaugh.com makes the installation of its funny blog cartoons on your blog, easy and hassle free. No registration is required! Just explore the site and find the cartoon that you would like to put on your blog. Below the cartoon will be the HTML code that you need to add to your blog/post. copy the entire code from the textbox below the blog comic and add it to your post or blog.

Death Sentence for "Bad" Bloggers in Iran

Blogging as one of the essential means of the “free speech” propagation in the modern society is seen as significant threat by the religious conservative Iranian government. About a year and a half ago, the Iranian government officially demanded that all bloggers, who are Iranian citizens, have to register and provide their names and addresses on a site called Samandehi. Many people have their reasons to believe that such a process would facilitate legal action against them, if they continue to post censorship-free publications on their blogs. Bloggers resisted and many published an “I do not register my blog/site” banner on their blogs. The Government then realized it cannot have real control of the situation in the blogosphere, or force bloggers to register. However, it is doing everything possible to shut down “inappropriate” blogs, and even jail the responsible bloggers.

There is a history of the bloggers’ prosecution in Iran as well. Blogging about subjects such as minority rights and freedom of speech and religion has already carried a risk. In 2005, blogger Mojtaba Saminejad was tried before a local court in Teheran charged with insulting the prophets, which carries the death penalty. He was eventually acquitted. Last year, two Kurdish bloggers were sentenced to death on charges of subversive activities against national security, spying and separatist propaganda.

To strengthen a legal base for the bloggers prosecution, on Wednesday, Iranian members of parliament voted to discuss a draft bill that seeks to “toughen punishment for disturbing mental security in society.” The text of the bill would add “establishing websites and weblogs promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy” to the list of crimes punishable by death. Apostasy is defined by dictionary.com as “a total desertion of or departure from one’s religion, principles, party, cause, etc.” but in Iran it could have a wide-ranging and flexible meaning. The government might simply use the bill at its convenience, physically removing non-cooperating bloggers from the map.

Blogging is wildly popular in Iran, where a new generation of young people frequently challenges the old, hyper-conservative religious government. The Committee to Protect Bloggers says that Iran is "among the worst offenders in terms of harassing, arresting and imprisoning bloggers, as well as students." The Iranian government has already blocked access to many respected sites as Facebook, Yahoo! and Flickr, among others.

Even the president if Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has his own blog. Is he in danger now as well?

Bazri, one of the Iranian bloggers, warns: “We should do our best to stop members of parliament from approving this draft bill. Tomorrow it will be too late. It is easy to accuse a blogger of apostasy and corruption. Let’s tell the Parliament that to think differently is not a crime that should be punishable by death.”

But who can tell Iranian government that they are wrong? Can international community do something to save our brothers-bloggers from prosecution? As small, as we can do, please support the case, whenever you can, wherever you go!

Additional Reading:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/iranian_deth_penalty_for_bloggers.php

http://www.geek.com/iran-may-start-putting-bloggers-to-death-20080707/

http://globalvoicesonline.org/2008/07/04/iran-death-penalty-for-blogging/

http://www.citizensugar.com/1764871

NicEdit - Comments Format Enhancement

Comments left by your readers on your Web Site or blog give produce a perception of the site popularity and legitimacy. Therefore, comments are generally encouraged, with exception of junk and spam, that can be successfully blocked by the modern filtering.
NicEdit is a very handy solution that helps, among other applications, to bring more user comments. It is done by significant enhancement of the comments formating capabilities.

NicEdit is a Lightweight, Cross Platform, Inline Content Editor allowing easy editing of comments or any web site content as a matter of fact on the fly in the browser. This Javascript utility can be easily integrated in any site with minimal impact while providing visitors an effective means to express themselves in rich text, making the standard text areas completely obsolete and boring.

NicEdit was developed by Brian Kirchoff and is free to use for any purpose under the MIT license.