6 SEO Reasons Why you Should Stop Using Zemanta

Recently in Feb 2013 Blogger integrated Zemanta with Blogspot blogs. Zemanta is indeed a great editorial plugin that helps you to write blog posts easily but unfortunately all such automated blogging tools does not help you to write well Optimized Blog posts that could protect you from the latest Google Penguin 2.0 Penalty! Penguin 2.0 is written especially to kill spam and unnatural links.  Zemanta blogging Plugin as you will discover later in this post could badly impact the inbound and outbound link balance of your entire blog, if you are not well versed with SEO link attributes. 

 

Following are the four important reasons why we think you should temporarily stop using zemanta to produce blog posts unless zemanta promises to improve their API:

1. Too Many external Image links

Zemanta has add-on and extensions for all major browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer and safari. Zemanta Plugin adds two links to the images. One inside the caption and one to the image itself. New bloggers who are not well versed with SEO pitfalls of these links often don't bother removing the caption and unlinking the image, considering it to be ethical to give credits to the rightful owner of the image. 

 

This causes a serious imbalance between your internal and external links causing a serious loss to site wide PageRank. 

2. Loss of Image Search Traffic:

You won't get traffic from Image Search because your images wont load from your server but the site you linked. In short all these images that you add through zemanta are not uploaded on your image folder, so you are simply destroying your Image Search traffic.

3. Increase in 404 Errors:

Zemanta image links could return a 404 not found crawling errors in your webmaster tools if the images are deleted by the original owner. These images are uploaded on external servers. Suppose you added an image to your blog post which is stored on Flickr. But what if that image is deleted some months later by the Flickr account holder? The image wont display and would return a 404 error to the search crawler.This would cause a serious increase in crawling errors inside your webmasters account.

4. Increase in server errors: 

zemanta suggests images mostly from its users blogs, Wikipedia or Flickr. If too many requests are sent for an image, then the website whose image is linked could possibly exceed its bandwidth limit and could go down. Most sites often don't allow external sites to directly use their Image Links and often limit the accessibility. If the user has not put such a restriction on images and you are using his image on your blog then it is acceptable but what if next month he puts the restriction? All your images would be gone - destroying both your readership and SEO reputation.

5. Misleading nofollow Option

Now here is a funny thing. If you click on Preferences Tab inside your zemanta account and look at the bottom of page under the sub-tab Look. You will see the following description for nofollow link attribute.

If you carefully see, its written rel="link_nofollow". I wonder when did this new attribute got introduced? At least I have never heard of it on any forum! I would request the Zemanta Developer to edit this line and change it to rel="nofollow" instead. This is the right way to write it.

The problem with this option is that if you activate it then it will nofollow all links on your post no matter whether they are external or internal! If you nofollow an internal link you are simply confusing the robot with content inside your very own blog and stopping the robot from crawling your internal pages. Further this option adds nofollow everywhere but not to the image links which again is surprising. 

 

If you don't activate it then it will pass your PageRank juice to all external sites that appear under the related posts sections unless you manually nofollow them.

Therefore I would advise never to use this option because it is poorly scripted. 

Isn't this option misleading for users who are not well versed with SEO and just clicks this option thinking it may nofollow external links only?

6. In-Text Links irrelevancy

The in-Text Links option gives you the ability to automatically link phrases to related sites. But most often the in-Text links suggestions consist of root domain URLs only. Zemanta mostly gives link suggestions which point to homepages only and not the relevant page except for wikipedia. So if you are talking about a Facebook Plugin, it wont gives suggestions to the plugins page but would instead point to Facebook.com

 

So if you are simply throwing external links without natural relevancy you are simply making your blog prepared for a delicious punch by Penguin Penalty!

Do you use Zemanta?

We tried to be as precise and clear as possible and mentioned all possible pitfalls of using this utility on your Blogger, Wordpress or TypePad blog. We love zemanta API ourselves and we would love it even more if these SEO points are kept in mind by the team and some serious updates are rolled out to ensure that people who use zemanta may stay safe and protected from Search Engine Algorithmic updates and may not lose precious organic traffic by blindly using the tool. They can also publish some tutorials to educate their users with the SEO guidelines and better optimized use of the tool. Amazingly they just posted about Penguin update themselves on their blog but shared no tips to their users on how to better use the plugin!

 

How long have you been using zemanta and what experiences would you like to share with us?

Stay safe and keep your SEO plug on always. Peace and blessings buddies :) 

Note: We don't share reasons without proves and have no personal offence towards any Online Business. We simply educate our readers with Search Engine requirements, policies and help them remain safe and protected. This post should be taken as a positive criticism, which if Zemanta team try to correct could change our views later.

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Posted at 09:16 |  by Unknown

Bestt 30 Recommended SEO Settings for Blogger

Learning SEO is important for every webmaster and blogger. Why? Because no matter how great the content on your site is, you're not getting any of it into search results if you don't apply SEO tactics. SEO makes your content visible to the outside world. Therefore, for your content to actually bring in any traffic, you need SEO. We have previously shared various posts on search engine optimization, but today, I'd like to share some SEO settings that every blogger should apply on their blog. These are specific to Blogger, but that doesn't mean you can't apply some of them to other platforms.

Before writing a post

1. Choose your topic carefully

Choosing the post topic is the most important part of creating content. The topic you choose should be compliant with what your users want. It should be unique and original, and should offer something of value to the users. Then, as you're constructing your post, you should ask yourself some questions regarding the topic and content (see Number 20 below).

2. Check out competition

Always check to see what your competitors are doing; what topics they're posting about, what strategies they're using, and most importantly, what's hot on their websites. I'm not saying that you go ahead and copy them. But take a general hint before coming up with your own content ideas.

3. Check out latest trends

Make sure you follow the latest trends and news on various social media networks. Write about what's hot. Writing on the most recent trends not only brings in a lot of readers, it also tells search engines that your website is dynamic, and provides fresh and latest content to its users.

4. Keyword research before post!

So, you've decided to write about something. But you're looking for words to explain? You have to learn how to do some keyword research first. You will need keywords for various different things, such as titles, meta descriptions, tags, and so on. Check out this article on doing keyword research to find out more about it.

5. The difference between a writer and a blogger

A good blogger might be a good writer, but the vice-versa isn't always true. A good writer might know how to write for readers, but a blogger also knows how to write for search engines. To be a good blogger, you need to adopt a technical style of writing, keep a consistent approach, and a lot more. Check out this post on creating great content that applies to readers as well as search engines.

6. Recommended word limit

There's no such thing as an 'ideal word limit' for a blog post. It purely depends on the number of posts you publish, and the post topic. But SEO experts agree on a minimum of 300 words to avoid penalties. We would recommend a range of 500-700 words on average, since that seems to be the magic number when it comes to readers - neither too short so as to miss out on important things, nor too long for it to get boring.

While writing a post

7. The title is the king!

The title is the most important part of a blog post, since it is the one that actually brings in the clicks. Optimizing post titles is a part of being a good blogger. Check out this post to learn all about creating search engine friendly post titles.

8. Optimize Permalink

Always keep permalinks short. Use custom permalinks of around 4-5 words at max, and separate each word a hyphen "-". Make sure you capture your most important keyword in the permalink (your focus keyword).

9. Intro with keywords

Keep all the keywords you can up with at the start in mind, and use them all in your introductory paragraph. It doesn't matter how many keywords you use in the content. But you must use them all at least once in the intro paragraph.

10. Headings and subheadings

Always use a combination of different headings. Usually, blog titles are H1s, so never use H1s. Post titles are usually H2s, so don't use H2s either. Use them only rarely. For the most part, use a combination of H3s and H4s in your post to specify a clear hierarchy in your content.

11. Typography

Typography refers to the styling of your content. It is almost as important as the content itself. Try to use different colored headings; use italic and bold text to emphasise your keywords, Also, once you're done writing your content, select all by pressing Ctrl + A, and then justify its alignment, so that the text looks neat at both ends.

12. Meta descriptions

The Meta description is the second-most important part of your post (after post title), as it is what users will see on a search engine (along with your title). Write a very short description of at most 170-180 characters, and make sure to include all the important keywords in it which you came up with before writing the actual post.

Linking

13. Inter link

Every post on your blog must have an internal link to another relevant post. This is one of the many ways to improve our rank. Try to at create at least two internal links within your intro paragraph, and at least one or two more in the rest of content.

14. Be careful with Anchor texts

An anchor text is the text you use to link to another page, and it is what users click to get to that other page. Choosing anchor text is a very important part of linking. Never use a single word anchor text. Always use a phrase. Usually, a three-word phrase is the best option. Always use a keyword phrase as anchor text.

Also, keep in mind to never use the same anchor text twice for the same link. It is considered as keyword stuffing, and/or spamming. Whether on your site or another, always vary the anchor text.

15. Nofollow vs dofollow links

A nofollow attribute in a link tells a search crawler not to 'follow' a link. First of all, when linking to external pages, always link to a page that has a better rank than yours. But if you must link to a lower quality page, always us the rel="nofollow" attribute with the link tag. But never do this for reputable sites, like Google, Wikipedia etc, nor for linking to your own pages.

Visuals

16. Use visual content to enhance your posts

Images, videos, infographics, animations; such things spice up your content. If you have a video related to your content, that's great. Otherwise, try to include at least one image in you blog post. And depending upon the topic, you can add many. But make sure you don't add too many, so much so that the textual content gets snuffed out.

17. Naming files and images 

Before uploading a video, audio, or image file, always make sure you rename it. Use meaningful keywords, and separate them with dashes. This way, users and search engines can tell what the file is about just by its file path!

18. Optimize images before uploading

Suppose you want to display an image that is 500 pixels wide and 300 pixels high. There's no point in uploading a 1200x720 image. It'll take up space on your server, and rendering time at the user's end. Do everybody a favour, and scale down your images before uploading them.

19. Image Title and Alt text

Always tag images with Titles and Alt text. And always use relevant keywords. We've compiled some posts for you regarding image optimization. 

After writing a post

20. Basic questions to ask about your content

So you've created really awesome content. Great! But before it is internet-worthy, you need to ask yourself a few questions about. If the answer to any of the questions below is no, then there's something wrong with the content!

• Does the content make sense?
• Have I used good grimmer and punctuation and made little spelling mistakes?
• Is the content useful?
• It is unique/original?
• It it worth sharing and linking?
• Is it appropriately detailed?
• Does it have visual content, such as images or videos?
• Does it have examples, references, unique ideas?
• Is it interactive enough with the readers?
• Are there enough calls to action to invoke engagement?
• Does it ask readers questions about their own experiences?

21. Blog labels

Organize your blog's structure into a series of Labels (or tags and categories if you're using WordPress). Use at least one, and at max three labels for one blog post. And keep the total number of labels between 15 and 20 (for Blogger blogs, but same for categories in WordPress).

22. Synchronize posts with the traffic

Don't publish your blog 

posts as you complete them. Always schedule them for an appropriate time. For example, monitor your traffic stats and see what time do you get the most amount of traffic. You might want to schedule your posts for around that time. But try to be consistent about your timing. Pick a timing that works for you, and stick to it!

23. Posting frequenc

There are no restrictions when it comes to posting frequency. But the more, the better. Try to keep up with at least one post a day. You may write as many as you can per day though. There's no limit. You can even write a hundred if you can afford to :)

Other settings

24. Create a sitemap

A sitemap is a listing of all the pages on your site. Often times, search crawlers might miss out on a page because you might not have linked to it in any other page. So to tell search engines to index that isolated page, you have to submit a sitemap to them. You could use a plugin for generating a sitemap, or read our post on Blogger Sitemap Generator for more details.

25. Blog load time

The blog load time is the most important when it comes to user-friendliness. The slower a blog loads, the more users tend to leave it before it's done loading. So always try to keep your load time to a minimum. Here are some tips that should help;

26. Sitelinks

Sitelinks appear on blogs that have PR 2 or above, and they are a collection of some of the links on your blog that appear in Google search results. They make your blog look more professional. Check out our post on how to tell Google what links to display in sitelinks.

27. Social bookmarking widgets

Add social bookmarking widgets on your blog to improve your social rankings. Search engines like it when they find links to your social profiles. Besides, such widgets make it easier for users to share your content.

28. Directory submissions

Submitting your blog to directories such as DMoz increases the number of backlinks you have, and in turn, your website's rank.

29. Working on your PageRank

PageRank is Google's way of ranking websites. The higher your PR, the better chances you have of getting into search results, and the faster your index rate will be.

30. Avoiding SEO penalties

In the end, avoid using shady SEO tactics to jump your rank. Always use Search engine friendly techniques to avoid algorithmic penalties.

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Posted at 01:43 |  by Unknown

Find and Remove Unnatural Links in Blogger

You might have accumulated some links for your site over the course of its lifespan. But while backlinks remains an important factor in search rankings, search algorithms have come a long way in detecting bad links, and penalizing websites for them. Which is why it might be time for you to do a link audit for your site, and remove any unnatural links that might be holding you back in search result pages. Continue reading this post to find out how to find, and clean up your bad links efficiently.

Finding suspicious links

Okay, so the first thing you need to do is, find out all of the suspicious links you might have have. They might not necessarily be all lousy. But you need to cover as many links as possible to do a link-clean-up.

Your first clue to a bad link would be a message in your Google Webmaster Tools dashboard from Google, informing you about bad links that could incur a penalty. If you receive such a message, you've a problem and need to deal with it immediately. If you don't, then that doesn't mean you don't have bad links. You will have to check manually.

Now go into Google Webmaster Tools, and under the Search Traffic section, click on Links to your site. Here, you need to make some intelligent decisions. For example, if a single domain constitutes a majority of your backlinks, say above 50%, then you might have a problem. Similarly, if a lot of backlinks are coming directly to your homepage, then you need to do some clean-up. Same is the case when only a few domains are linking a lot to a certain page on your site. Such links often cause a penalty, and are typically found in ads, footers, or blogrolls.

Organize lists

Now is time for creating some lists. Google Webmaster Tools allows you to download lists in a spreadsheet format. From the Links to your site option and under the Who links the most section, click on More. Then, download the two lists as shown below.

Combine the two lists, sort by ascending or descending order, and then remove any duplicates. Run the list through a spider software, such as Screaming frog, and isolate all the non 200 and 301 responses. Don't delete them. Simply create different lists for 200 and 301 links, and non 200/301 links. Now, take the 200/301 links, and run them through a script, isolating ones with a "nofollow" link. This will leave you with 200/301 followed links. These you will have to check manually.

Manual removal

Now, you will manually have to check all the 200/301 followed links.Open each one in a browser, and see if its a 404 or not. If it is, then move on. Open up the document's source code, and search for your domain (eg, mybloggertricks.com, not www.mybloggertricks.com). For each link to your domain you find, check if it's indeed a followed link. If it isn't, and has a nofollow tag, then move on. If it is, then you need to check the quality of the webpage it's on. Here are a few pointers to help you.

• Link should be in the content, not on a sidebar or footer.
• Link should not be among other unnatural links
• Link should be relevant to the content on the page.
• The linking page should not be spammy, or a 'submit a link' scheme page.
• Link should not be in comments

If the link seems unnatural to you, use the Disavow tool to remove it. But be sure to avoid any mistakes with this tool.

Now, you've removed the bulk of your bad links. Remember; you need to do this every once in a while to ensure things run smoothly. Also note that it takes some time for Google Webmaster Tools to register changes with your links, so wait patiently if your removed links are still showing up.

And please be careful with what links you disavow. Think it over thoroughly before you arrive at a decision, because you don't want to throw away a link that adds value.

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Posted at 00:38 |  by Unknown

How To Change Width Size of Blogger Comment Box [updated]

 

Customize Width of Blogger Comment Box - There are questions of friends in this blog Forum and Discussion Forum, about how to change the size of the comment box . Even though the question has been answered, I guess there are still friends who do not know how to expand this comment form. 

I see a lot of templates and somewhat disturbing beautiful  blog,  both for the owner or visitor .. smile 

Many ways you can do, But I found the easiest way and the result is precision, not biased for changing comment box size change to 100% of width without any error
 
To change the Width size the comment box Follow below steps-
   

1. Sign In and Go to Template --> Edit HTML
2. Find this tag : ]]> </ b: skin> [using Ctrl+F] 
3. Copy the Below code & paste just above of  ]]> </ b: skin>
4. Then click to "Save Template" Button. 

Before the addition of CSS above Code , more or less the result is like this: :-(

  
 After the addition of CSS code, the result is like this: :-)

 I hope you This method helpful for you and should you need any further assistance, please don't hesitate to comment :

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Posted at 15:44 |  by Unknown

Optimize Blogger with Secret Meta Tag

There are over 200 factors used by Google to position yourself in your browser and nobody knows them all. If you're starting with your blog learns the most basic and focus on producing quality content that will attract traffic which at first with the help of social networks.

10 Basic SEO Factors That You Should Know But Do Not Know SEO

1. Do not copy, or to another or yourself. If multiple pages with the same content, Google will only consider the first you have indexed, the rest are penalized and removed from search results.Google does not weigh who is doubling the pages, so it will also penalize copies of your own content.
   
2. Tickets Do not put more than one title. When you give a text format Heading 1  (label

   in html), you are indicating that the text is a title. Although only use it once in the text, your post and have two titles and the discard of Google searches.

3. Uses key phrases. A key phrase is formed by several keywords . The keyword is one of among the people look, which always appear in the top of results. Virtually no one goes beyond the first page of search engine results so that a search will only bring you visitors if your entry is in the top 10 search results.
   
   
   • A key word of a new blog, except that hardly anyone searches performed, never appear in the top positions in the first year so you should focus on key phrases , that while fewer people are looking for, you have options to reach a good position in searches.
   
   
4. key phrases in the title, the URL, in the first paragraph and in a subtitle. When I want to place an article by key phrase, is you have to try to include at least the title especially at the beginning of it, in the url, in the first paragraph and in some subtitle format having more importance Heading 2 ( label

   in html) that the  Heading 3 (label

   in html) and so on. Should also use the key phrase in the extract, as the label and the text in bold.
   
   

5. keyword density. You have to be careful not to put too many keywords in an article, because Google does not consider it natural and could penalize you. It is considered appropriate keyword density of between 1 and 5%. Also in your texts using synonyms for your keywords, it is more natural.
   
6. Put labels to images. Putting your keyword phrase in the images, in the ALT tag in html, helps in positioning and can bring traffic and make your pictures appear in the results of  image searches  with that keyword.
   
7. uses natural links. A link is a recommendation and Google values many links, provided they are natural. A natural link does not seek the position using a keyword. Use the trade name (blog name or its owner, company, etc..) Or phrases like click here.
   
8. uses internal and external links. In your tickets you must combine links to other articles on your blog with links to other pages. The internal links to Google facilitates the work of indexingyour blog because you are teaching them are Google related content. For external links that link to pages should be more important than yours, such as the Wikipedia , digital newspapers, pages from government or universities. Google will consider your content is of higher quality, which will help in positioning.
   
9. Do not trade links. The receive many links will help in positioning provided they are of themed blogs or websites similar to yours. Calls should avoid link farms, sites built specifically to accommodate links to other sites, and sites penalized by Google. These links rather than improve your position would harm him.
   
   • A link exchange with another website in the best is neutral and does not affect your ranking, but more often is that even harmful. Neither are good links received from the footer of a website.
   
   
10. Write your posts at least 400 words. Google indexes your items from some 300 words. Other search engines have their lows a bit higher, so you should the minimum size also makes it easy to get a proper density of keywords.

Cookies and Web Beacons

1. Frequency of publication. Google values  content update. Frequent updating is synonymous with your commitment to your blog , with good content. A blog that is not updated is an abandoned project that would ultimately eliminate search results. Besides frequent publication increases the content of your blog content with as many keywords and phrases that will crawl Google.
   
   
2. Joined the domain. Google wants to ensure the quality of search results. A domain that has spent years running is a domain of a serious project, compared to young domain is unknown. 
3. Duration of contract domain. When you hire a domain, you can do it for a year or more. If you do it for several demonstrate the intention not to abandon your short-term project, which is valued by Google.
   
   
4. Bounce rate . If people when it comes into your pages does not remain a reasonable time, is that your content does not like and therefore not offered in their searches.
   
5. Loading time of your pages. If your pages load slowly the user experience will be poor.Google users avoid carrying your pages.
   

What other basic factors for positioning a blog you know? , I'd like you told us in the comments of this page

 

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Posted at 15:29 |  by Unknown