If you like me, are an avid Google Reader user and want to share your favorite articles with your Twitter Followers, here is a quick way to do it:

Step 1: Open Google Reader. On the left hand side you will find the Sidebar. Click on “Your Stuff”

Step 2: Every Google Reader has a Unique ID Associated with it. Check your Address Bar and note the same. IT would be a string of Digits located between the “%2F” characters.

Step 3: Open TwitterFeed. Its a free services not affiliate to Twitter, and helps integrate your RSS with Twitter. You can login to your TwitterFeed account using OpenID (OpenID wiki). Since you are already using Google Reader, you can use your Google Login as an OpenID provider.

Step 4: Click on New Feed, and start entering the details. As simple as that.

• Enter your Twitter Username and Password, so TwitterFeed knows where it will post your Updates.
• In the RSS Feed URL, Enter the following Feed -  “http://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user%2F10316601016267458964%2Fstate%2Fcom.google%2Fbroadcast”. Replace the strikeout characters by your Google Reader Unique ID.
• Set the Update Frequency and Number of Updates. You can post maximum 5 Updates per Half hour. Maximum 5 updates cap is there to limit your Twitter Account to be marked as Spam.
• You can also Edit how your Update will look. You can set it for “Title Only”, “Description Only” or both. I would prefer “Title Only” owing to Twitter’s short updates.
• You can also select a Link shortening service. TinyURL and SnipURL are my favorites. But there are other services also.
• Finally you can also prefix your Updates with some common text. And also selectively post Items based on specified keywords.
• Once done, Click Save and you are set to go. TwitterFeed will update your Google Reader’s shared items in your Twitter Account. Yeppie..!!

Got a cool Twitter Tip? Share it with me and other readers via comments. Happy Maha Shivratri. Have a nice Day..!!

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While other statistics are also important and tell you a lot about your site, Comments from your blog visitors is the most important reflection for your Authority in your domain. However, the comments should be natural and not provoked by a offering or a controversial topic.

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Reasons for Encouraging Comments on your Blog

There are a lot of reasons for encouraging more comments on your blog apart form the feel good factor. It gives me a lot of satisfaction when someone comments on my blog. I go through their comment and make a note of what they have to say. Even constructive criticism are welcome. It give you an effective ruler to measure your performance as a Blogger. Let’s see some of the main benefits you derive from encouraging more comments for your blog posts.

Gives you Feedback

The most important reason and benefit of comments are that “THEY COMPLETE THE COMMUNICATION CYCLE”. The communication cycle starts with the sender (a blogger in this case) communicating via the medium (the blog post) to the recipients (the blog readers), and Feedback being the Comments Section.

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Continuation of Discussion

Another important aspect of comments are that they continue the discussion from the point where the blog post left. You might ask a open ended question or invite suggestion for your topic. Then the commentators gets a chance to extend your idea and provide his interpretation of the topic.

They become your Critics

Comments keeps you in check. They channel your flow of posts. They stop you to go all ga-ga about yourself. They stop you from been criticizing someone in public for more than they deserve. They in a way border’s your post and control the check of the blogosphere. They tell you if you have written a bad post or done an excellent work.

Gives Ideas for more Post Topics

Comments are a good way to gather ideas for more blog posts. The discussion and views posted by commentators are often filled with new ideas of what could be your next post. May be they can encourage you to write up a follow up post to the current one. Listen to your comments. Stitch them together and you have a good analytic report in front of you.

Inspire you as a Blogger

There is nothing that inspires me more than a good comment. Not even attaining an increase in Pagerank. It feels great that people are reading your posts. It reminds you, that something you have written is adding value to something greater. Makes you write more posts like that.

Helps SEO for your Blog

Google, Yahoo, Live and many other search engines rank your blog by looking at how many quality links are coming in and going out. Comments and Trackbacks are a good and natural way to promote your blog to the Search Engines. The deal is simple. Write Killer Post Content. It encourages visitors to comment more. The more they comment, the more good it does for you SEO.

Increase Blog’s Authority

Finally, comments are the most important thing in bragging a Blog’s Authority. I think Average comments per post would be the best indication and sites like Technorati should take that into account rather than how many trackbacks are shared among the blogs.

Add your own points via comments. Have a nice Day..!!

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Some of the info and methods posted over here might seems Black Hat Techniques. Readers are informed beforehand that these techniques are not endorsed by us and are given here only for informational purposes. Applying them might have negative effect on your Blogs and Sites in terms of SEO. Use at your own Risk.

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What is Blog Farming?

The definition of Blog Farming is not very clear. As I understand it, the definition should be as follows:

“Blog Farming is the process of creating Blogs which are intended for a purpose other than adding value for its readers. Most of the blogs created contain duplicate content or content which do not add any value.”

Blog farming is analogous to any other farming. Its just like raising fishes or poultry. The motive is simple. Create Blog with copied content and raise them for a purpose other than Blogging or Value Addition.

What Blog Farming is not..!!

Blog Farming is not you creating a network of sites with related content, but created under different blogs to keep things separate. You might create three sites, one for WordPress Tips, one for Blogging Tips and one for Internet Marketing Tips. And you might as well promote you one blog from another blog by placing site wide links. This is something I would classify under the term “Blog Network”

Bu what if you create a site solely to post 10 posts and then sell t for Cost + say $10 or $15 max. You do not want to waste your precious time on it anymore than few hours. This is dicey and not clear. Depends on if the Blog you creates adds value for its reader or not.

Automation is Key to Blog Farming

By now you must have guessed that Blog Farming does not involve 3-4 Blogs. Rather it involves a large network of blogs and can get pretty frustrating to manage if done on a large scale.

Automation is the key here. A few WordPress Plugins can be used to set up a Blog to auto generate content which are either straight forward copies of other’s work or a mash up of similar blog posts.

I would take this up in one of our future posts, teaching “HOW TO CREATE A BLOG FARM WITH MINIMUM EFFORT AND TIME”. So keep your eyes on us..!!

Why to Webmaster create Blog Farms?

There are many reasons. But most of the reasons are either higher SERPS or similar. Its all about getting a vast network of sites out and create link exchange on them. There can be a few motives

• Getting higher SERPS (Search Engine Rank Pages)
• Earning revenue from Adsense / Affiliate Marketing.
• Selling Back links to other Webmasters

There are many other reasons I may have missed out. Readers can contribute via comments.

Have a nice day..!!

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Networking is the barebones of survival in Blogosphere. That’s how the bloggers come together, communicate and exchange stuff. Bloggers (apart from the SEO junkies) and other web addicts have a nack of searching new sites, be it blogs, web services or image gallery. During the course of their surfing session, they may have posted comments on many blogs. So how do you make sure they recall your blog at the end of the day.

Simple, the moment a new commentator comes along and post a genuine comment (by genuine I mean the comment should not be a tailored made comment for getting a free back link), what you can do is send a honest “Thank You” mail.

By honest Thank You Mail, I mean do not try to push products or other posts on to his face in the Thank You mail. A kind sentence of appreciation and a polite invitation for reading more of your blog content would do the trick.

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Automate the Task

It is easy to automate the task by using a WordPress Plug-in called Comment Relish. It sends a Thank You Mail to all new commentators (those who have one comment). This is a good tactic for a Blog with large number of Commentators, but if you have a small blog, you can keep a draft message ready and send the emails personally.

Have a nice day..!!

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Shakespeare once said “What’s in a name? We can….”. Funny irony is that, the same quote has been published a million time with his name attributed at the end of it. Ha ha..

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1. Always use “.com” Domain Name

Stay away from other top level domain names apart from “.com” The reasoning is pretty simple – dot-com domains are pretty easier to remember, consider de facto and feels comfortable to link to a site. If someone said you to type yahoo, chances are you will type yahoo.com by default.

You can choose a different top level domain, if you cannot find a better dot-com domain name. Although avoid local / country specific domain names like “.co.uk” or “.co.us” unless you are focusing your site to target those geographical area.

2. Keep Blog Name same as your Domain Name

Apart form search engine optimization, it also help in your reader to better connect with your blog. So make sure your domain name is linked to your Blog name if not an exact replica. Dailybt.com can be linked to Daily blogging tips or Nytimes.com can be linked to New York Times.

3. Easy to remember

Avoid confusing letters, alpha numeric words, abbreviations like L33T, Tips4u etc. in your both Domain name and Blog name. They are confusing, often misspelled and not easy to recall.

4. Put your main keyword in your domain name

An absolute must, at least according to me. The most important criteria for search engine optimization are the domain name and the title of the site. Putting your most targeted keyword (also known as primary keywords) in these areas helps you maximize the SEO potential of your site. Don’t ignore this tip.

5. Don’t go too general, Don’t go too niche

Avoid very general topics like Blogging news if you are not able to cover decent share of news from the blogging world. Rather narrow it down to a geographical location like Australian bloggers or narrow it with respect to category like SEO news or Blog design news.

But don’t over do it. It might happen that you choose too narrow a topic that either you find it difficult to gather content for the site or there are no visitors for the topic you have chosen.

6. Think of a tag line to your blog name

Make your blog sound like a movie, add a tag line.

Why? to have the same effect what tagline have in movie poster, to attach a recall value to the word. Problogger.net has it, JohnChow.com has it, heck even I have it, so why don’t you. Start thinking one. It should be a short sentence, very focused to the main target area or service you are blogging about.

There you have six quick points to help you choose your blog name / domain name. This list is not exhaustive, and i am opening the post for discussion. Let me know what tips you can add to the above list. Use comments to reply.

Have a nice day ..!!

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There are no free lunches in this world. But there are discount coupons for sure.

Minute 1: Add your blog name in your forum signatures

Die-Hard Social Web participants today fancy themselves with their avatars and signatures while communicating over the web. Whether it is a social networking site or a community building forum, you will always find these two things related to you and differentiating your online identity from others.

Having signature is not something new. We had this since long back associated with your email. So why not use it for promoting your blog. Put your website’s URL in the signature. It won’t even take a minute and is a one time affair.

Note: Please make sure if your forum permits having URLs in your signature.
Avatar definition: A digital representation of a user in virtual reality site.
Signature definition: A group of lines attached to the end of a message that identifies the author and often includes additional information such as contact information, organizational affiliation, or a favorite quote.

Minute 2: Submit your site to a Search Engine

Ok, this sounds dumb. You have already done that. But how many search sites you have submitted to? Ask yourself, is there any search site with global presence that you missed out. If your blog cater to a niche segment or local flavor, have you submitted to the local search engines?

Local search engines and small players have less competition and thus chances of yours listing higher are more.

Minute 3: Submit to free Web Directories

Hunt for free web directories and list your site on them. Make sure you list it in the proper categories assign for it. Last thing you would want is your blog for interior designing categorized under lifestyle section.

Few places to start would be www.dmoz.org, www.worldsiteindex.com, www.domaining.in, www.webworldindex.com, www.searchsight.com .

Minute 4: Create Blog replicas

What is a Blog Replica? Now this may be considered as Black Hat practice by some but the idea works nevertheless. Say you have a blog abc.com on your web hosting space. Create blogs with same name at free accounts like Blogger (abc.blogspot.com) and WordPress (abc.wordpress.com). These are your Blog replicas or redirects.

Now for every time you post on your main blog, make sure you post the same headline on these blogs and few opening lines of the post. After which you can add a link to your post on the main blog (abc.com). This should not take much time. Later check with Google Analytics to see if any traffic is directed from these sites to your main blog and accordingly decide if you should continue.

Minute 5: Join Yahoo and Google Groups and notify them each time you post

Subscribe yourself to Yahoo and Google groups which cater to your blog’s niche. These group generally have a common group address, through which you can mail to the entire group participants. Every time you write a post which you thing the community would be interesting in reading, send the link to be delivered to the group’s participants.

Be warned though, it may tarnish your image if you send loads of posts or post which does not have mass appeal.

Minute 6: Make sure your post gets at least one Digg / Stumble

Last tip consist of Digging or Stumbling your self once for your post. Do this only for posts which you think have high quality content and have mass appeal. Also avoid doing this every time.

Digging yourself using another ID or with the help of a friend falls in the grey area. Some people argue that it is a bad practice while some say it is perfectly alright. Whatever it may be, remember at no point of time would you like to get your blog blacklisted by a major bookmarking site.

So that’s it. Six simple steps and in less than six minutes you have started advertising for your blog for free.

Credits:

• http://flickr.com/photos/spitzgogo/276142599/

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