FIFA World Cup 2010 has been a trending topic online, for quite a few days now. Many bloggers have also started posting about the FIFA. However, it is important to check whether you are using the right keywords, in right places. This post is just to give a tip to increase your earnings to a small extent.

While writing FIFA posts, most blogs (especially Indian) I have read, have used the keyword Football (including me).  However, I recently did a adwords keyword search using the keyword tool regarding this. I found that the keyword “soccer” had more Estimated Avg.CPC, than the keyword “football”.

Well, the reason why we (Indians) use “football” more often than “soccer” is that “football” is used all over the world, while “Soccer” is American. As, in most parts of world, “football” is in practice, we tend to use “football”.

If you take a look at the image below, the keyword “football” has an average CPC of around 0.99 USD, while “soccer” has an average CPC of 1.13 USD. The difference is pretty much noticeable.

Another thing is, while doing the keyword research, the location was set to United States. Since most bloggers, as far as I know, target American traffic, it’s better to use “soccer” keyword in your posts than “football” keyword.

But, till now we just looked at the average CPC. But, if you see the the search volume for the keyword “football” is more than the search volume for “soccer”. It’s almost less than half the “football” volume. So, it’s better to use both the keywords simultaneously. Like, “football” in the title and excerpt, while “soccer” in the middle of the posts. What do you think?

This post is not written by an expert. These are just my views and there may be many mistakes in my analysis. I expect you to hit me with questions or tell me what’s right and what’s wrong. We can strike a discussion together. Thanks for reading!

Google very recently launched real-time search which included Twitter tweets about the hot news that was going on. A research by Digital Beat on this new integration has revealed that there has been a increase of traffic for the social networking site, Twitter.

comScore: Graph analyses the traffic

The statistics from ComScore show that there has been a little increase in traffic than the normal traffic that the social networking site was getting usually. In January this year, Twitter got 21.79 million unique visitors which was pretty much higher than that of 21.25 million visitors (calculated on July 2009). There was a 3.1 percent increase in the traffic, in December when compared with the traffic in the previous month. So, the real time search which was introduced on December 7 has caused a great impact on Twitter’s traffic.

Experian Hitwise collects some data on this aspect. The graph above shows the increase in the traffic that is driven to Twitter through Google. There has been a 9% increase in the traffic that Twitter got from Google in the time period of December 5th to February 13th.

[Image Source]

Search Engine Optimization is one of the toughest concept I have seen while blogging. This is the reason why many blogs writing about SEO have emerged and get good traffic too! There are lots of tools to check out of how much “search engine friendly” you website is. Today I found a very interesting tool that you may like it.

SEO-Browser.com is a tool that helps you to check how search engines sees a particular website/blog. This is helpful for the bloggers to analyze and optimize their website with ease. To use this tool, you need to enter your blog URL and you are done.

There are two modes for analyzing your website. Simple mode and Advanced mode. Simple mode just shows you how a page is viewed by a search engine. Whereas in advanced mode, it helps you to analyze many internal aspects of a website/blog like metadata, external and internal links, CSS sheet, duplicate content and so on… These are the aspects which are very important to note while optimizing your website for search engine.

Overall, SEO-Browser is very helpful for website optimization. What do you think about this tool? Do you think it will really help in optimizing blogs? Share your thoughts through comments below. Every comment you make is of great value to me.

SEO I Did To This Post

SEO Title: Know How Search Engines See Your Blog/Website

“Blog/Website” again as in the previous post , you need to use double keywords in your title. This helps you to rank higher. Actually, “know” here is a noise, however it would not be nice to submit a title which contains only keywords. So I added that word. BTW, I have a doubt here. If you are reading this line, please be kind to answer my small doubt:

“What’s wrong in adding only keywords in the title instead of sentences?”

SEO Excerpt: Here is a tool that helps you to look at your blog/website in a way search engines look. This gives you a deeper understanding of SEO and make your blog more SEO-Friendly!

Some important keywords: “blog/website”, “SEO”, “SEO-Friendly”

SEO tags: seo for blogs, tool to seo, how search engine looks a website,

There are many sites out there to make reviews of new software and applications that are launched. To stand a step ahead of them, you need to be creative in giving reviews of any software or application, in order to satisfy your readers.There are many aspects, a blogger has too keep in mind while reviewing a application.

Why Do People Read Reviews In Blogs?

This is an important question to be answered before continuing the talk on writing a review. Even though there are lots of application reviewing sites on web such as Softpedia, FileHippo, Tucows and so on, people read reviews on blogs for many reasons. I have listed them here:

1) People trust reviews made on blogs as bloggers check them before reviewing it. However, not every blogger does this. So beware, readers!

2) It is neatly explained on blogs rather than other sites that I mentioned above. So, readers can get an insight of what that application actually is, and whether they are in need of it or not.

3) Bloggers give a detailed tutorial of how to use an application, thus making the work of a reader easier.

These are some of the reasons why people wish to read reviews on blog. But, what I have seen on many blogs is that they just write review in a short paragraph and end the post. If that is the matter, then readers would prefer on sites like Softpedia only as they update faster than you.

Tips To Write Review On a Application

So, with above points in mind, we need to write such a post, so that it will be helpful to readers in all ways. Here are some points that you need to take care before writing a review post.

1) NEVER WRITE A POST WITHOUT TRYING THE APPLICATION. This is the most important point that has to be kept in mind before writing a review post. Remember, if you write a post on an application that doesn’t work or contains viruses, then you may get lot of teachers to teach you how to write a blogpost. More than that, if a software contains a virus you will be the cause for hacked PCs of your readers.

2) As far as you can, explain the features of the applcation through images. You can check this post of mine, I had written recently for better understanding.

3) Add a special section in your post called THE STRIKING FEATURE to emphasize on the exact usefulness of the application.

4) If there are any complications in using the applications, give a simple tutorial below the review of how to use it.

My Usual Practice Of Writing Reviews On Applications

I usually, at the beginning, explain briefly about what the application is all about. Then, I list all the places and situations where this application can be used. After this I move on with features through complete image tutorial. I mark the important features in the images so that readers can can understand them easily. Later, if I feel there is a real striking feature then I create a separate section, if otherwise I add it in the features section only. At the end I conclude with encouraging the users to test the application and discuss there experience.

Features List: Bullets Or Paragraphs

It is often a common discussion about how to write the features section. I would say, it all depends on the app. If there are so many features that needs lot of explanation, then it is better to write them in paragraphs. If the features do not require much explanation then bullets would do.

For example, if you are writing the review of Google Wave, there are many features that you have to explain to readers like Tweeting from Wave, Sharing a Wave and so on. These features require explanation as to how it is useful and how to use it. So, it would be better to write paragraphs to explain its features.

However, if you are reviewing a simple application like Notepad + +, it would be enough if you write a list of features as shown below:

• WYSIWYG Editor
• Multi-Viewing
• Multi-documents…… and so on.

However, these are completely my point of view and there is no compulsion that you have to accept it.

So, what do you think of my practice of writing reviews? Did you find this post useful? Please share your opinions through comments below.

Google Chrome is the fastest browser, when compared with Firefox or Opera. While simplicity is one reason for its speed, there is another reason.

If you are a Google Chrome user, then you must have seen that there are multiple “chrome.exe” processes running. This is because, Google Chrome considers, each tab as a different process.

For example, try opening a single tab. You will see only one chrome.exe process running on Task Manager. Now, open another tab and you will see that there are two processes running.

This is a new and unique  idea which I think is not any other browser so far. This actually helps to increase the speed of a browser, as there will be distribution of load through tabs. This is unlike, Firefox and Opera, which considers the whole process.

Writing good content helpful for people is the key factor for a blog to become famous. However, apart from that there are many other factors, which influence the popularity of a blog. One such factor is readability of a post. Today, in this post, I am going to share few tips that would be helpful for any blogger.

BTW, What exactly is readability?

Readability of a post, in a layman’s language, is how well can a post or an article be understood by others. However, if you go deeper you will find that readability of an article is calculated based on different factors in an article. Flesch-Kincaid Readability is a method of finding out the percentage of readability of a paragraph.

According to the Flesch-Kincaid Readability formula mentioned in the Wikipedia, scores of the articles are calculated. Here is a table that will tell you the range of scores you must try to achieve depending on your audience.

90-100: Very Easy
80-89: Easy
70-79: Fairly Easy
60-69: Standard
50-59: Fairly Difficult
30-49: Difficult
0-29: Very Confusing

As the topic under discussion here is blogging, it would be ideal to get a score of readability between 60-70, as most blog readers are neither professionals in English nor too weak.

Now after defining, the score you want your posts to have, it is time to concentrate on achieving it.

How To Test The Readability Of A Post?

This important question is worth answering here. After knowing so much about the need of maintaining readability of a post, there is a need to implement them in your writings.

Coming to the tool, MS word is itself a best tool for checking the readability of a post. It actually tests the Flesch-Kincaid Readability I had discussed. Here is a brief tutorial to enable that option:

• Go to MS Word 2007, Click on the review tab.
• Click the Spelling & Grammar option.
• Click on the Options in the opened dialog box.
• Check the Readability statistics option.

After this, you would be getting the readability statistics in the percentage. Try to maintain the percentage between 60 and 70 as I had said above.

Tips To Increase The Readability

• Try to keep your sentences brief and easily readable to others.
• Do not combine too many sentences and make it a single sentence. At the maximum, combine two sentences with all the required punctuations at the correct places.
• Use the punctuation marks at the proper places, so that they are easy to read for your readers.
• Try to avoid as many miss-spells as possible.
• Use blog writers such as Windows Live Writer and Word, so that it would be easy to do spell check etc.

The number of people entering the blogosphere is increasing exponentially nowadays. So, how does one become famous in blogging? There are many factors that are to be concentrated while becoming a successful blogger. Among those, one is the rank you get on search engine for a particular search query. (I would like to warn you at the beginning itself, this is not the Google PR I am talking about.)

For a blogger to become famous, he must write posts which are needed for people and also not written by anyone. By my experience of about 5 months of blogging, I have come to know that most people quit their search for a single page. Thus it becomes important to track your position in the Google search query.

Take for example, this post, “Add Bing Search In Opera 10“. I get lot of traffic for this post. This is because of two reasons. One is that people search for such things and the second reason is that it stands at a good position on Google search query. (You can check the position here). Thus, I hope you got the idea of positions in Google Queries.

Here is a tool that helps you to find where you stand on the search engine query for keywords you enter. Just enter the keywords for which you want to know the position of your blog. Here is a small example:

Here, I have entered the keywords for the post I had said earlier and I get my position at No.4. Thus, it’s important for you to check out where you stand on the search engine. Try out this software here. And don’t forget to subscribe to my blog if you like the post.

Revealing all the details of your posts in the homepage itself is really boring. This is because it makes the homepage very lengthy and also will not look attractive. So, in order to make your blog more attractive and also make your homepage short and sweet, you have to use excerpts to your posts. This also sometimes increases the page rank because of the number of links that increase. That is why you often see that the homepage of a blog has higher page rank than other pages of the blog.

You can add excerpts to the blog in the following way:

First add the following piece to your blogger stylesheet in the layout options.( Note that style-sheet means the portion between <style> and </style> tags.)  This piece of code is for people using classic blogger template.

<MainOrArchivePage>
   span.fullpost {display:none;}
</MainOrArchivePage>

<ItemPage>
   span.fullpost {display:inline;}
</ItemPage>

If you are using other than the blogger classic template from a third party, then use this code:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
   span.fullpost {display:inline;}
<b:else/>
   span.fullpost {display:none;}
</b:if>

(Make sure that you backup your template before manipulating through them.)

What we did here was, we told the template to create a span class “fullpost” i.e., to have a option called full post which appears only on post pages.

After you have done the above steps, you have to check the expand widget template option.

Now we are creating Read More Links for every post.

For classic templates:

Search for “<data:post.body/>” tag in your template file and below that copy the following code.

<MainOrArchivePage><br />
   <a href="<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>">Read more!</a>
</MainOrArchivePage>

For other templates, copy the following code into your stylesheet after the tag “<data:.post.body/>”

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != "item"'><br />
   <a expr:href='data:post.url'>Read more!</a>
</b:if>

After this save your template. Your work with the template is done. Now while writing the posts add the following tags

<span class="fullpost"></span>

The syntax for the above code is something like this:

Here is the beginning of my post. <span>And here is the rest of it.</span>

Or, instead fo typing the above code everytime in the post, save it in the “post template”. (This is present in

“settings>formatting”)

That’s it. The job is done. You can now see that there are excerpts or summaries created in your homepage. Enjoy!!

Via Blogger Help

Blogging is becoming very famous nowadays. Everybody wants to blog and share their feelings. But what makes a blog famous? What do readers like in a blog? How to succeed in blogging??

I started blogging four months ago with a sub-domain and recently switched over to this domain. I have learnt  lot of things in these days.

A blog’s success depend on it’s subscribers and readers. (Everybody knows this… right)  I don’t like to tell more things about these as you may have already read in many other blogs. The question discussed here is:

“How to Get Readers For a Blog??”

Before answering this question, one has to look at what readers want in a blog. According to my observations, readers love posts of analysis of a subject rather than news posts or findings or reviews. (Well, here I am talking about mostly tech blogs). People want to follow the blogs that explain the concepts in a very simple and common layman’s language. The most famous Wikipedia is not so capable of explaining the concepts in a simple manner. This is the entry of blogs for readers.

To explain you more, first visit famous sites such as copyblogger or problogger and browse through their posts. You can see that they write more “What…?” or “How….? “ posts. They analyze the things and write about their analysis of a particular subject. This is what gains a readership for a blog.

But, of course a blog has to contain all types of posts, be it news or findings. It has to be well balanced. But all these “news or findings” posts gives only temporary traffic. But for permanent traffic you need to gain readers. This is how you can make a blog successful. So, according to me readers are permanent traffic and it is very essential to gain them.

So, in order to gain readers,

• A blogger must understand the topics he wants to post and explain it in his own simple words.
• He has to be very good in narration, so that people don’t get bored reading it.
• If you are really interested in posting news, then you have to analyze the latest trend and then write an analysis of it. Not just a review. For example, if you want to write the news about launch of Bing by Microsoft, then analyze what people like about it and what not. What is the impact of it on Google. Don’t just simply write posts like “Microsoft launches Bing” etc.  (You can get an idea about this Tech Crunch.)

What do you think about this, right or wrong??  Comment below.

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