BLOG HELPER FOR BLOGGERS : February 2014

Important cPanel Settings For Beginner Webmasters

CPanel has become a very popular web hosting platform / software, and once you migrate to your own domain or buy a new one, your hosting company will most likely provide you with the cPanel software pre-installed on your domain for your ease. In fact, it has now become the industry standard for hosting companies. For those of you who are acquainted with web-hosting, you will know how important such a software can be. It puts a lot of tools and features at your finger tips, thus allowing you to stop worrying about the management and concentrate on the domain itself. But for beginners, especially those who have no prior web-hosting experience, it could be a challenging and confusing environment. Here are some basic settings every beginner should set to ensure his domain is safe and secure.

Create a strong password

The first thing you should do when assigned a cPanel access is to set up a strong password. Now this is a bit obvious, but this step is more important than you think. There have been numerous complains regarding cPanel hacks, mostly because of the default passwords that were never changed. Once you lose your cPanel password, it's really hard to get it back, and you have to contact the web hosting

XHTML To HTML: Blogger Template Conversion

what if you needed to keep the same design of your blog and only remove the Dynamic objects like widgets. This could easily be achieved by carefully converting the XHTML format of code structure to Basic HTML 4.0 File. This will enable you to even embed or add a PHP or ASP.net code inside the Cloned BlogSpot design in HTML format. A live example is our Contact page with a PHP contact Form. It is not possible to add PHP inside blogger templates because no direct access to web hosting ftp account is available so far. When you visit our contact page, you will feel like you are still in BlogSpot template environment but in reality its only a Cloned HTML design of the original template. The steps today are interesting and fun to try. Make sure you have a webhosting to try today's tutorial. We are using hostgator as our blog web host to host all our files and resources.

HostGator's Crazy Black Friday Discount - 75% OFF!

So this year's biggest discounts are just around the corner, and just short of the usual Christmas sales we see starting in December around the world, we have the Black Friday/Cyber Monday 'discount holidays'. And for us web-hosting enthusiasts, that can mean only one thing. Crazy discounts from HostGator! This year, we can expect as much as a 75% whopping discount on all new HostGator sales, which includes shared, reseller, and dedicated web hosting! Starting from 29th November, these promotions aren't just limited to this coming Friday. Instead, they will run through the weekend, and well into this Monday, aka Cyber Monday. So get to ready to avail what might be the biggest discount EVER from HostGator!

All weekend long promotion!

During the course of this promotion, all new sales for Shared, Reseller, VPS and Dedicated hosting will enjoy a 60% discount throughout! And new domains will be available at only $4.5! This promotion wil

Is Making Money From Blogging Haram

Note: For the record, let me just say that I do not claim to be a religious scholar. But having some domain knowledge, we'll try to discuss some issues majorly related to ethics and morality, and not very specific to a religion. Anyone can benefit from reading this post, as it applies to the blogging community as a whole.

OK, so moving on. A lot of people don't think twice about such issues, but apparently, some do. They are worried that their earnings might not be lawful for them from a religious point of view, since money made online can come from a lot of different sources, lawful or unlawful.

The concept of 'haram' for Muslims refers to anything that is unlawful, and prohibited. This could anything from unlawful food to unlawful attire to unlawful deeds, and so on. Hence, anything that is

How Can You Use Snapchat To Increase Website Traffic

Snapchat is an exciting new social media platform through which people can send photos and short videos to each other. But wait, didn't we have apps like Instagram and WhatsApp already to achieve that same purpose? Well, if Facebook was willing to buy it off for $3 Billion, and Google for $4 Billion, then there's definitely more to it that meets the eye. But what's amazing is that the CEO of the company turned both offers down! Obviously, he has great plans for the future. So what exactly is Snapchat, and how can it benefit businesses?

What is Snapchat?

You can think of it as an SMS/MMS application (a bit like WhatsApp) which allows you to send images and videos - or 'snaps' - to a list of recipients. You can add text (up to 80 characters), and drawings (with a stylus or your finger) to an image or video before sending. A video can be at max 10 seconds long

The sender can time these snaps via a 'snap clock' - anywhere between 1 to 10 seconds. The receiver

Should You Add A Meta Description For Every Page

A Meta Description is a concise, 170-character description of what a webpage is about. They are commonly used on search engine result pages (SERPs) to display preview snippets for a given page. Beyond that, they're also used on social platforms, and other sharing sites for the same purpose. We know from our general knowledge of SEO best practices that adding meta descriptions is a good idea. But are they absolutely necessary? Should every page on a website have a unique meta description?

Do it right, or forget it!

OK, first thing's first, meta descriptions are not a ranking factor. So sometimes, it is okay to ignore them. Often, there are a lot of pages on a website or blog, and it can be really time-consuming to sit through the process of writing a meta description for each one (not to mention mind-numbing and boring!). So in

Why Bing Doesn't Index Sitemap of Blogger Blogs

For most people (and webmasters), Google is the only search engine, or at least the only worthy search engine. Granted that it controls two-thirds of the market. But with Bing and Yahoo!partnering up, they control a quarter of the market share as well. So it's time we paid more attention to Bing, because unlike Google Search, things don't just magically happen with Bing. For example, Bing doesn't easily index sitemaps for Blogger and WordPress blogs.

Apparently, Bing's indexing system is quite different from that of Google. In Google, you simply have to submit your sitemap to Webmaster Tools, and it will automatically index your blog after a few days. But with Bing, there's no knowing when your blog will be indexed. Often times, it simply doesn't index your sitemap. Bing's community forums are filled with complaints just like this.

There's a reason why Google owns the market space. It has a mature and sophisticated search engine, whereas Bing still needs to learn a lot. Perhaps we're too used to Google by now to enjoy the features offered by Bing. But be that as it may, Bing is still in its infancy, and have yet to develop the rich indexing capabilities offered by Google. Here are some of the ways the Bing search engine works

1. Sponsored Reviews

Paid reviews are a very common method of making money. Authoritative websites, or websites focused on a particular niche get paid to review certain website, app or web service. If you have a website with a decent traffic, you can contact a review network too and get paid for writing reviews on your website. Some of these networks include PayPerPost, ReviewMe, and BlogVertise etc.

2. Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a form of advertisement, but not if you do it properly. Instead of just stamping an affiliate ad in your website's sidebar, it's far more important to actually create content about the product you're advocating. People write reviews, comparisons, rounds ups, and so on about the affiliate

Syntax for Label search

Blogger databases are not visible to its users but users has the advantage of running certain queries to access the tables. With the introduction of Blogger API v3, you can now easily add running list of blog posts, pages and comments to a non-Blogger hosted site. Qasim will discuss this with you all in a post tonight. My job is to introduce you to simple search queries that can do wonders.

Label Search Syntax URL:
You may already know the below syntax.
http://ssfonlineblog.blogspot.com/search/label/label+Name
Note: Labels are case sensitive. If a label names starts with an uppercase letter and you write a lowercase then the query will not return the result. If a label name is Social Media (first letters are capital) and you type social mEdia then it wont work. You must type the exact same letters

1. Searching a Label

Lets try searching for all posts nested under the label Social Media in our blog. The URL would look like

What makes a post 'bad'?

As mentioned before, certain content remains relevant only for a limited period of time. For example, a job listing is irrelevant once that position has been filled. Similarly, online shopping stores have to deal with products going out of stock all the time. Some eCommerce sites might even stop selling products from a certain vendor.

Blog posts tend to get outdated too. News highlights are a common example. But more important are the reviews, tutorials, and round-ups that you write. For example, the top 10 most useful WordPress plugins might not be the same in 2014 as they were in 2013. And suppose you wrote a plugin development tutorial based on WordPress 3.8. What if WordPress completely changes in version 4?

Another common problem among bloggers is, they have to put up with a lot of low-quality posts they put

What is the Blogger API and what can you do with it?

An API, or Application Package Interface is a set of commands you can call, or interface with, from an external application. The developers of an application provides APIs if they want other developer to create apps and interact with their own.

Similarly, the Blogger team has created an API of its own that allows external developers to interact with the Blogger content management system. With this API, you can;

Add posts, pages and comments from your Blogger blog to a non-blogger website
Create desktop software that allows users to create or edit Blogger posts from their desktop computers
Create browser and mobile-based apps that serve the same purpose as above

Basics

First, you need to know some of the basics of objects and resources available in the API. There are five

1. Public Relations

This era is all about public relations! They've always been an integral part of any successful marketing campaign, but are now more important than ever. Today's customer is harder than ever to get.

Public relations can be used to build strong powerful links - links that don’t trigger penalties such as Penguin. Understanding how to pitch a story to news outlets, get them to run the story, and then link back to your site, will be one of the most powerful link building tactics now and in the future.

2. Research

Whether it’s keyword research or content development; research is becoming an increasingly important step with SEO. Not to say that it wasn't before, but is now more so than ever. The Google Hummingbird update has now forced (or is trying to force) webmasters to develop

What about fan-base and followership?

The problem with extracting followership information is, it requires a lot of engineering work to try to extract this data from webpages. In the process, GoogleBot runs the risk of getting blocked from crawling the website. This has happened before once. So Google now tries to avoid doing anything that might get it blocked again from crawling these social sites.

Google crawls the web, and samples it at finite intervals of time, rather than in real-time. The problem with that is, something on a webpage can change after it has been sampled. This happens with many websites, but for most of them, this isn't a problem. Usually, the content change isn't much (or not at all), and Google can pick up that change in the next crawl.

Social sites, however, are unlike most other websites in that they are very dynamic. Content on them changes often. And these changes are important. It doesn't matter much if I add an extra paragraph to a blog post after Google has crawled it, since it's not very important. I can simply wait for the next

1. Taking risks

People often tend to get intimidated by their competitors' numbers. Often, businesses try to inflate their statistics as a propaganda. So often times, they may be exaggerated. Studies show consumers are still being more careful with their money and not putting as much on credit. So not every business is doing great. There's no need to panic. If you or your product are worth the price you have listed, and you are not pricing yourself out of the market then stay put with your prices!

Also, now might be the time for some good investments. Do not be afraid to take risks, because what's business without risk, eh?

2. Show your public face!

Most business owners don't know, or care about it, but customers actually convert better when they

1. Create Videos on YouTube

Videos are the best! You can do more for a cause in a video than an article or book ever can. Touching, motivational videos are what often secure the most amount of support for a project/cause. If your projects is going to do some good for the community, then it shouldn't be hard making such a video.

But don't just stop at a single video. Provide your patrons insights into what you've been up to, where you can justify the need for more funding. Some generous people might keep supporting your project until its done. So don't let them think they're wasting their money. Give them reason to support

Article directories

Article directories are places where you wrote an article ranging from 300 to 1,000 words (possibly more), and if approved, got compensated for the article in the form of a backlink, or money etc. The articles would mostly be published under your name, so you still retained some of the rights. Authors had bios at the end of their articles with possibly two or three links with keyword-rich anchor text.

Article directories such as Ezine Articles, Articles Factory, Go Articles etc. were very popular, and had twofold benefits. For one thing, they were a way of building relevant backlink that can't be questioned. And for another, they provided a way of earning a quick buck by writing articles. Hundreds and thousands of people quickly realized the potential, and started contributing

Does Domain Age Have An Effect On Website Rankings?

To bust this myth right out, Google's search algorithms - or no search algorithms for that matter - do not take a website's age into account when ranking it search results. If that were the case, startups would have a pretty rough time getting any traffic at all from search engines. And old, 'mature' domain names would be very highly priced, irrespective of domain name value.

But don't throw it out the window just yet. Age isn't totally useless. It is sometimes used to evaluate a site's trust rating. New domains are created and sold all the time. It is the old domains that retain value, gain people's trust, and accumulate added value. If two social networks suddenly surfaced, with a similar user-base and set of features, I'd go for the one that's been around for more time. Similarly, if two websites seem to have the same content duplicated, I'd expect the older site to be more of an authority as compared to the other site that opened up just last week.

So a website gradually matures with age. And it can indirectly effect search ranking factors positively if the website owner has made use of the time, and has kept a good track record.

How to set up an error page?

How you set up your error pages is very important. It's not merely a question of putting upsomething as a contingency plan, just in case a link is broken. It's about how to deal with a disappointed visitor. Although there is no hard-and-fast rule for this kind of this, it is generally agreed that a 404 error page should have the following.

Your company's name and logo
An explanation of why the visitor is seeing this page
A list of common mistakes that may explain the problem
Links back to the homepage and/or other pages that might be relevant

It is worth noticing that all of these domains are .com domains, which goes on to say that they're the most valuable. These domain names are single-worded and are heavily searched by internet users, and get tonnes of direct traffic. So there you are, you just got yourself a tip: always try to buy single-worded domain, if you ever so chose to go into the domain trading business :)

1. insure.com - $16 Million

Insure.com was purchased by QuinStreet, an online marketing services and technology company. It is the single largest domain name ever sold. It was originally acquired by Insure.com for $1.6 million in December 2001. The website now provides life, car and health insurance quotes among others.

2. fund.com - $14.9

fund.com is owned by “Gentile, Philip “. Gentile, Philip bought this domain for £9.9 million in March

How to enable Enclosure links in Blogger?

In order to enclose podcast media into your blog post, you first have to turn on enclosure links. To do this, go to your Blogger dashboard, and then click on Settings >> Other from the sidebar on the left.

Next, look for the option that says Enable Title Links and Enclosure Links. Set this option toYes.

Adding Font Awesome icons to Blogger?

Follow these steps to add Font Awesome icons anywhere on your Blogger blog (or any HTML webpage for that matter).

Call external Stylesheet

Open your webpage's source code, and locate the <head> section. If you want to add these icons to your template like ours, you need to open your Blogger dashboard, and go into the Edit HTML. Once you've located the header section, copy and paste the following line of markup there.

<link href="http://netdna.bootstrapcdn.com/font-awesome/4.0.3/css/font-awesome.css" rel="stylesheet"/>

Make sure you copy the link as it is (including the http:// part). This is where the Font Awesome CSS file

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