Learn how to optimize your website for Google

I have written about where to begin your SEO quest before. Getting the search engines to recognize that your post/article/website is about the topic that you intend that to be, is a science by itself. It is not too hard to start, but becomes considerably harder when you are competing against sites with good authority (e.g. bbc.com, moz.com), and hundreds or thousands of articles.

Going back to the topic of starting with SEO, it makes absolute sense to learn how Google sees it. Especially since Google has been acting as a representative of internet for a long time now. And, also the fact that more than 80% of the searches on internet are from Google.

So then, thanks to a now not remembered source, I found this “not quite new” document that is well written and takes you through all the internet search engine basics. As is the case with effective user documentation, this is not about the software itself but about how to make use of it more effectively to do whatever you want to do.

Although not as well documented from a completeness perspective as compared to the aforesaid moz guide, it makes for some more basic reading on the recommendations from the search engine leader. But do note a couple of things:

1. In a modern content management system or a blog (e.g. Drupal, Wordpress) a lot of these aspects are already taken care of. For example, title of the page is automatically set, the URLs can be made as friendly to the topic as possible, images are assigned descriptive/alternate text, and so on.
2. Many of the topics are of interest to people who are designing websites from scratch. I do not believe there is a sizable population who do that today, but it is interesting to know nevertheless

ShareX review. A really good screen capture tool

I write my share of posts on a couple of blogs, and with posts invariably comes images and screenshots to explain what I am writing about. Often I find the need to either:

• Capture only a part of image
• Annotate images
• Capture screenshots one after the other
• Capture only part of the application or window

This is easier said than done. In ancient history I have used Alt+Print Screen and used Paint to change images and upload them manually to the posts. But as I became more serious in writing I upgraded to Screenshotcaptor. An excellent program by DonationCoder, I absolutely loved this program. Screenshotcaptor helps you to not only take screenshots in a variety of ways, but also makes it a lot easier to take periodic screenshots, add special effects like torn edges, focus on current windows with blur effect, annotate images and do much more. I was so thrilled by using this program and by the philosophy of DonationCoder that I actually parted with a small amount of money to show my appreciation.

But my problem was not completely solved. I was looking at a program that can take screenshots and hopefully upload them as well. When Screenshotcaptor documentation introduced me to ShareX for screenshot uploads, I downloaded the program for the sake of trying it, and became hooked. This is a brief ShareX review of a fan, be warned.

ShareX, a good screen capture tool

ShareX is an open source program (GPL v3 license), and surprisingly nimble (<5MB disk) for the power it brings to the table. ShareX is not only for images, but can do a lot more. Its objective as I understand it – make any file on the computer sharable on the web. ShareX makes that as easy as it can get.

First, the interesting part for bloggers like me. ShareX makes it easy to capture screens, or parts of application windows in a variety of shapes (though rectangle is all I use). ShareX internally uses another simple application called Greenshot image editor to annotate screenshots, crop them or blur/obfuscate in parts. Once you finish the annotation, ShareX can automatically upload images to your favourite image host, or Google drive.

The best part – everything is configurable. You can choose the shortcut keys to automatically take screenshot of entire screen or part of the screen, choose to have annotation or otherwise, and upload images to 9 different image hosts incl. Imgur, Flickr, Picassa (Google drive), Tinypic, Imageshack or even use a custom uploader. You can optionally run the URL through a URL shortener service like bit.ly or goo.gl.

At various stages, you can also copy images or the URLs of the uploaded images automatically to the clipboard. In addition to this, you can upload already saved images to image hosts.

ShareX, as mentioned previously, can also share text or other files, and upload files to Dropbox, Box, RapidShare, Google Drive among others.

After trying out many tools (both paid and free), I have come to the simple conclusion that ShareX is irreplaceable today. I have been using it extensively for more than six months now. It is an excellent timesaver, and has been of great help in making a repeatable task as painless as possible.

Thank you Jaex and other contributors. Your work here is inspiring to say the least.

Full laundry list of ShareX key features

From ShareX site -

Capture methods: Fullscreen, Active window, Window list, Active monitor, Monitor list, Rectangle, Rectangle + Window, Rounded rectangle, Ellipse, Triangle, Diamond, Polygon, Free hand, Last region, Screen recording (Supports animated gif), Auto capture

After capture: Add image effects, Add watermark, Annotate image, Copy image to clipboard, Print image, Save image to file, Save image to file as, Copy file to clipboard, Copy file path to clipboard, Perform actions, Upload image to host

Upload methods: File upload, Clipboard upload, Drag and drop, Send to from Windows Explorer, Watch folder

After upload: Use URL shortener, Post URL to social networking service, Send URL with Email, Copy URL to clipboard

Image uploaders: imageshack.us, tinypic.com, imgur.com, flickr.com, photobucket.com, picasaweb.google.com, uploadscreenshot.com, twitpic.com, twitsnaps.com, yfrog.com, imm.io, File uploader

Text uploaders: pastebin.com, pastebin.ca, paste2.org, slexy.org, pastee.org, paste.ee, File uploader

File uploaders: dropbox.com, mega.co.nz, Google Drive, rapidshare.com, sendspace.com, minus.com, box.com, ge.tt, localhostr.com, Custom uploader, FTP server, Shared folder, Email

URL shorteners: goo.gl, bit.ly, j.mp, is.gd, tinyurl.com, turl.ca

Social networking services: twitter.com

Tools: Screen color picker, Hash check, Index folder, Image effects

How to get the audience to unsubscribe to your emails?

I don’t know about you, but my internet marketing quest has taken me to places I did not think existed. As a result of all that I can proudly say that I know more negatives of the “standard/recommended way to market stuff over internet”, more ways to annoy people, and more ways of making your subscribers get away from you.
I have mentioned about email lists before. Not quite my preferred means of communication, but people seem to like it, some people click on emails rather than spend time on feeds or social media, people use emails many things things – hence using that channel cannot be wrong. I totally get it. But once you acquire subscribers, I don’t understand why some (otherwise smart) people go about alienating them.

courtesy: jean pierre gallot @ flickr

In my search to know and learn more about writing, content marketing and a bit of selling, I subscribed to emails from a lot of sites – more sites than what you can consider healthy. I was forced to subscribe to more than a few since the website owners seemed to think that email is the best and only communication channel. A few others promised thousands of dollars worth of goodies, others promised that I will achieve nirvana and so on. Though my preferred update channel is my feed, I still went about did that since I wanted to know why email marketing is considered one of the best channels ever and how apparently successful marketers do it. While in the process of going through that, I have collected some gems on what to do when you want to loose your subscribers – fast! Without further ado, let us get on with the list.

1. Have HTML emails, which try to put out some banners, images and the like while the user tries to read it. Who does not like a big fat, colourful email that seems to show the whole world?
2. Have generous ads in the emails. Users deserve ads
3. Try to generalize content and use language bordering on spam, so that:
• you can test spam filters in multiple email providers
• try to reach the spam folder safely so that users do not even come to know of the email
4. Have no context to what you are trying to sell. Oh yes, users are surely be overcoming with curiosity to go find out more
5. Before even knowing the user, start blasting some upsells. You have your sales funnel to watch and just cannot wait for the user to get comfortable. Upsell from the very first email, try to get them buy more even before trying out your first "product”. You never know whether they will come back
6. Pump up emails. Yes, users are going to be amazed by the email content generation machine that you have become
7. Make emails personal. Not personal as in “address me by first name”, but start narrating just how much you love your beautiful family as a technology update
8. Try to pass on an affiliate link or two for completely unrelated products - you want to try your luck just one more time

That is all there is to it folks. Do you have any good examples of what to do in emails to get your users hate you?
Before I sign off though, there are more than a couple of examples that are not following the above “proven” methods. I not only subscribe to them wholeheartedly, but the emails become a welcome read after the tiring work of going through the feeds of the day :)

• Emails from copyblogger. You don’t expect anything but the best from them
• Emails from viperchill. Thank you Glen!
• Emails from Pat Flynn of smartpassiveincome are lengthy but absolutely readable and full of information

Easily add Wordpress Featured Image and make posts look good

Wordpress added what was known as thumbnails to add a specific picture for a post. Since the blogs /sites are about information presentation in the most efficient manner, the images absolutely make sense.

To add a featured image is not a laborious task. While creating a new post, look out for the link/button at the bottom right hand-side that helpfully says “Add Featured Image” :)

 

Now, all you need is to publish the post and the image shows up against the post making your post look beautiful. If you are confused read up further on Wordpress site.

The problem –

• This adds additional manual activities to create posts, and I am lazy
• You may have hundreds and thousands of posts lying there that now look horrible

You can get quite confused by the design decision of not doing anything when a featured image is not found, since not all posts may contain images (yes, even today). For example http://www.technosanct.com (on blogger platform) shows the image against the post without me doing anything about it. The featured image in Wordpress is a ‘feature’ that allows you to add post images, and should not be seen in any other way. What should be done when there are no images or no featured images is left to the theme. It is not Wordpress problem per se, but the theme’s problem.

So, then to get around the problem you can do a couple of things:

1. You can select a theme that shows first image in your post as the feature image (this is what themes like mesocolumn do, there many be numerous others as well)
2. As numerous Wordpress Gurus have given in numerous posts, you can add code to your existing theme to show the first image (or any image) as the featured image
3. Use plugins to do the hard work
• Free plugins like Auto Post Thumbnail, Auto Featured Image, Default Thumbnail Plus scan for the first image of the post (or even the category), and upload them as featured image. The first two plugins can update featured images for existing posts as well
• There are plugins that can display category images or even the post titles when a featured image is not found (e.g. Thumbnail Grid)
4. Use a theme that does not show placeholders for featured images when that is not relevant for the posts (e.g. Accessible Zen)

My problem, however, could not be addressed fully. As posted earlier, I use a lot of images hotlinked from my Google drive. After my really long search, I had zeroed in on the themes and I did not want to loose them due to this reason. And, I could not really get comfortable with making code changes to the theme and test it for all possible scenarios. So, I took the easy way out. I used Auto Post Thumbnail Pro – the premium version of the free plugin mentioned above.

I absolutely love the feature list..

• Extracts the first Image or Video in post content and creates the featured image
• If no image found in post content, use the first attached image as featured image
• Existing Featured Images will not be changed
• Ability to provide default featured image to use if post content doesn’t have any image
• Generate thumbnails for Custom Post Types (Selectable)
• Generate thumbnails from external images
• Generate thumbnails from imported RSS feeds
• Generate featured images for old/legacy posts via a single click
• Setting to skip auto thumbnail generation right on the Post edit page
• Setting for smallest image to be considered as featured image
• Images inserted via shortcodes also supported. eg: [gallery]
• Auto thumbnail generation for popular video sharing services – YouTube, Vimeo, Blip.tv, Justin.tv, DailyMotion and MetaCafe
• Unlink Featured Images created by the plugin or all Featured Images
• Fully translatable
• Well supported with free updates

So, the USD 7 I spent on the plugin is well worth it. I did not have to deal with code (which I would have loved to do some other time), I did not have to search for new themes in the near future, and everyone is happy (hopefully incl. the theme author).

My advice however is to begin with the free plugins mentioned earlier in the post. If that does not cut it (you use external images, there are too many existing posts, have one too many video posts) or you are having trouble with little support, go ahead and try the premium version.

Where to begin your SEO quest?

I have written about my frustration with internet marketing before. I started all wrong when I began my website (on a nice topic), a general blog later and expected a bit of traffic. When I look back, and consider that I am still learning, there are multiple glaring issues with the way I started up:

1. I did not focus enough on what business plan would be.
   For example technosanct.com is all about technology in the web space. There are posts related to how articles ought to be written, which technologies help, lesser content on mobile technologies and desktop. But the objective is clear -  this site is about focused writing on web development, technologies that help in creating content, and other tidbits intended for people who want to create something on the web. This was not quite the same with some other websites.


2. Did not socialize enough.
   When search engine traffic is virtually non-existent and no responses, comments or income, it is really hard to keep on going for months. At that time it is really amazing what a few readers can do to encourage you to complete posts, and try to keep momentum going. I am thankful to at least two of them for their constant encouragement. But, this could have been more.
   The approach of “putting some content in and waiting for the readers” works, but takes a lot of time and persistence. This would have been a lot less painful if I had shared the website/post links on Facebook, Google+, Twitter pages for some immediate feedback from friends and colleagues.


3. Did not focus on what people are looking for.
   It is true that you write for yourself, but equally true that you want that message to be read or heard. So, it is really important to get a pulse on what people “want” to read on the topics that you want to write. There are hundreds and thousands of websites, and your content is subject to “needle in haystack” cliché.


4. No care for SEO.
   Search engines connect your content with people who locate the content.  Most of the people find your content only through search engines, and it is important to know what the search engine is looking for in the content. This is not to say that you have to “game” the search engines, but making it easy for them to understand what your content is about (so that they can present it to their users)

So, exactly where to begin your SEO quest?

I am happy to say that I realize this much, but have am a long way from attaining internet marketing nirvana. My education started with “get your income from internet” blogs, which may not be the right place to start but nevertheless gave me valuable information on what I was missing. However as I sifted through tonnes of information, the primary problems became quite apparent:

• I knew something (however small) about my topics, but not about how to outline that information to reach the audience (through search engines)
• Optimizing content (or creating content focused on) on what people are looking for

I overcame my distaste for moulding content for SEO due to the reason that as a writer I want the content to find the audience, and without the AI recognizing my content as worth-while that is never going to happen. I began following blogs/posts of “real” SEO experts and haunting sites that are focused on SEO. After going through tens of sites, I have realized that the best content is the most easy to miss.
Enter SEOmoz [or simply moz.com as it is known now].


The article (that also has a PDF for offline reading) starts from the basics and takes us through really good content that makes us aware of the “why” and “how” of going about becoming best friends with search engines. Unless I come up with something more informative, or presented with information in a more interesting way, I deem this article/post as the best place to start your quest on SEO.
Take a look or a re-look to come back all refreshed!