Blog entries

Informative blog articles from Blogger IQ

10 Great Videos To Improve Blog Quality – Google Webmaster Videos

March 17, 2015 by Arun Sarathy 5 Comments

10 videos to supercharge your blog

Matt Cutts, the head of Web Spam team at Google is currently on a long vacation at the time of writing this post (March 2015). However, his lessons and videos that are on YouTube never stops helping the SEO enthusiasts and bloggers alike. These videos are a part of the Google Webmaster series posted on YouTube.

I don’t know if Matt Cutts will extend his vacation further, but I do know that even if Mr. Cutts does extend his vacation, he is still going to be fine.

The reason am saying is because he has left so much of his “thought-prints” (like foot prints) around the internet that his explanations of SEO, website quality guidelines are all figuratively ever green for years to come.

Since you clicked on this post and are reading this, I assume that you are either a blogger or going to be one.

But whatever the case, am pretty sure you’ll like this post because given here are some of the basic yet useful videos by Matt Cutts which can indeed help both newcomers as well as established bloggers.

Ponder more: Get the summary of all Matt Cutts videos

I have curated some of the best of those videos and posted here in a single article so anyone who wants to learn a few basics and few advanced topics on SEO or blogging can be benefited to improve blogs.

These links are given in no specific order. However, the #1 rank is aptly given, at least in my humble opinion.

This is definitely not a complete list. These are just the 10 videos that I felt which are truly great.

I can go on adding more to this list, but just thought that these 10 videos are really basic as well as under-estimated by many new bloggers. Just focus on these first, even if you want to go further in this exciting journey of blogging.

These helped me learn the basics of SEO and blogging, and will help you too, I guarantee that.

Resources: For more videos like these – subscribe to Google Webmasters Group.

5 Must Haves For Every WordPress Blog

March 16, 2015 by Arun Sarathy 1 Comment

Are you a new blogger or an already established blogger who have written a 1000+ articles? It doesn’t matter in what situation you are but these five things are a must haves for every WordPress blog. I get asked frequently about what are the top most things that are must haves for a WordPress blog. I thought it is best to write a post about this so it can help anyone who are just starting out, although this can also help out intermediate level bloggers to check their list as well.

For all these 5 topics, I have also included the related plugins wherever applicable that you can install for your WordPress blog.

Archives page

This not only provides an easy way for your visitors to navigate your blog better but also provides a motivation for you to write more. Just click on the days to find out how many articles you’ve written. My favorite plugin for this purpose is the Archives Calendar Widget.

Commenting and Contacting System

A very logical way to increase more visitors is to have a working comment and contact system for your blogs. Even if you have great content and how-to guides, but doesn’t have a neat commenting or contacting system for your visitors, there will not be any organic traffic on your website. This also stops social interactions happening on your website. Imagine yourself as a visitor in someone’s blog – if you don’t have a way to send a feedback how would you feel? Thus, ensure you have a good commenting system in place. Contact form is also important for a blog, especially if you want your visitors to interact with you directly more on a personal note. This improves blog followership on the whole.

Ponder more: Edit WordPress comments to remove HTML tags

Related plugin: Jetpack is my favorite plugin that provides an excellent way for this.

Secure your blog

At least a couple of times, I get an email saying that my blog was under a threat and some random user from a random country tried to login to my WordPress blog. This is a very common situation and it can happen to anyone. If you haven’t already installed a security plugin for your blog and worse, if you don’t have a secured password for your WordPress admin dashboard, please rush to this plugin and install it to secure your blog. This also sends you an email alert whenever somebody tries to login to your blog or make any brute force attacks with WordPress blog login.

These are some of the plugins related to WordPress security. My favorite is Wordfence Security. Pick your choice for securing your blog with these plugins.

Change your Permalink structure

This is a no-brainer. If you have started blogging then am sure you are aware of what an SEO is. If not, please get yourself acquainted with this term SEO, because you will find this being used often by almost every blogger you’ll come across.

Eventually, every post written by every blogger will rank somewhere in the Google results page. But there are bright chances for only those to appear on page 1 of the SERP pages that has SEO done. Permalink plays a vital role in doing that exact thing.

Here’s how you can alter your Permalink in WordPress:

By default, WordPress keeps permalinks designed like http://sample.com/?p=123

You can (and should) change it by going to

http://www.YourSampleSite123.com/wp-admin/options-permalink.php

You can either select ‘Post name’ option or choose anything you like. Preferably ensure to have ‘sample-post’ or ‘post-name’ included in your permalink “always”. This can help boost your blog traffic tremendously.

About me page

Of course, there is no reason why I included this as #5 in the must haves list. This is a very key ingredient in branding your blog. Ensure a photo is included if you want to personalize and create a brand image for your blog. This will also contain information as to why you blog, who you are, who the founders of the blog are, when was it created, why was it created, how a visitor can reach you, where can they reach you at, etc. This will become your virtual visiting card/business card for all your visitors which you will provide for anyone who visits your blog. My favorite is the Starbox – the Author Box for Humans WordPress plugin.

This is not an exhaustive list and I can go on and on about the basic needs for a WordPress blog. However, when I sat out thinking about what tweaks I made when I started my blog, these were the 5 top things that came to my mind. Hope you found these useful. What 5 things you have done when you started first? I will be glad to know more, please do leave it in your comments below.

Newbie’s Guide To Creating Media Kits

March 15, 2015 by Arun Sarathy Leave a Comment

What is a media kit?

Press kit or Media kit as it is often called, is a set of information or more specifically some key ‘data’ that is kept ready for journalists, potential clients, promoters and investors so they have a ready information about the company they are interested in to initiate a business relationship or just to write about it. This helps in capturing media’s attention. This is a strategically collected information which is aimed to encourage media, journals, bloggers to write about you or promote you. It’s a way to promote one’s business.

This is not a new concept. In olden days (just decades ago), companies used to keep a stack of pamphlets, brochures, maps, images, data, model information, product strategies, key customer list in a folder which helps media and journalists to keep track of how a company is doing, and to also write about it so the outside interested parties can know more about it. It’s somewhat like a press release that’s given by a company so that more information is given out to the general public, more specifically whoever is interested in having a business relationship or even just reading and knowing more about the company. It’s the nitty-gritty of a company that shows key snapshots of how a company is performing.

This, especially makes the work of a journalist easier.

Media Kits Examples:

Check this blog post for some Media Kit examples on media kits that will inspire you.

Ponder more: Investopedia defines Media Kit

Ponder more: How to put together a press kit

Here’s a super image created by wetherillssayido.com which outlines what a media kit must have:

Ponder more: 10 inspiring media kits from bloggers

What is in a media kit?

Since Media Kit is all about what a company does, how it is doing, who are all its customers, and other related quantitative data, that’s what is mainly given in to a media kit folder. This can also contain the company’s mission, about the company, services provided, current clients, testimonials, contact information, etc.

Ponder more: What goes into a media kit?

How to write a media kit to grab the journalist’s attention?

Entrepreneur.com has a very good article, which I have cited below, where it gives an in-depth detail of how to actually get noticed by means of having a Press Kit developed. As they rightly pointed out, busy editors sort through piles of media kits every day and getting one’s press kit noticed is the key to publication and action.

Ponder more: Forbes media kit

One key point to note is that a Letter of introduction, more like an ‘About’ page in a company website, is what makes it more compelling to potential clients and media personnel to give a great impression. Because this is the page where majority of the people land to know more about any company out there on the internet.

This is also the page where contact information is usually provided for the clients to get in touch with a company, so it makes perfect sense to have a great About page as well – this can also go in to one’s media kit, nevertheless. It’s all about how you remain unique when there are so many people who do just the same thing. In order to grab attention of the people who ‘decide’ as to who gets business and who doesn’t – being unique and useful is the key.

Ponder more: How to write a good press kit?

Are there any media kit tools?

You may want to check these out:

Media toolkit and Media Kit Generator

In a nutshell:

What are the key ingredients of a good media kit? I made this list for a company that is web based – something like a blogger’s page who wants to be known to the world of affiliates and readers who might become customers.

1. Photo – a good photo of you, your company if located with any registered office.
2. About – what the company does, who are its founders, who are you. Why you do what you do.
3. Client information – who your current customers are
4. Subscribers – how many people follow you on social media
5. Unique visitors – how many people visit your blog, website, shop
6. Popular posts – if you are a blogger, media magazine, what’s your popular post(s).
7. Recent posts – when was the last you wrote, what is it
8. Stats – other stats that are important for your potential investors to know more about
9. Analytics – any other insights and analytics that you care for your customers to know about
10. Rates, if anything is being sold on your website – how much does your product cost. what’s its usage fundamentals and requirements. How does it benefit your customers.
11. Media coverage, interviews, etc. – were you recently in the news or just famous for something worthy of mention.
12. Testimonials – do you have good feedback and happy customers that you feel happy sharing with the world.

These are some of the quick points that I gathered for a good media kit to include. There is no hard and fast rule as to what to be included. Basically, its all the good data that a client or journalist cares about in writing or promoting a company. Just ensure all these information is readily available in a manner that is easy to understand and visuallly appealing.

Why are the fonts blurred in my computer and how to fix it

February 15, 2015 by Arun Sarathy Leave a Comment

Does your screen look something like this?

This does cause eye strain ¹, isn’t it?!

Then you will have to do a quick tweak to ‘Smooth out the edges of fonts‘. That’s the cause of this blurred view.

You can do a tiny ‘check-the-box’ setting to set this alright and change screen view…

To make this setting change, we have both, a long route and a short route ². Let’s see both.

Here’s how (Long route):

1. Right click on Computer icon
2. Select Properties (the last item in the context menu)
[Control Panel > System and Security > System] window opens up
3. On the left side, select Advanced system settings
4. Under Advanced tab, select Settings within the Performance group
5. Select the check box which reads ‘Smooth edges of screen fonts‘.

Click OK twice.

The changes would have now taken effect.

Short(est) route: Keyboard users will love this, especially who like using Keyboard Shortcuts extensively

1. Hit Win + R to open Run Command
2. Type in systempropertiesperformance
3. Select the check box which reads ‘Smooth edges of screen fonts‘.

Another way to check for your screen font view settings is by seeing if you have activated ClearType text (Windows 7). Here’s how.

Go to Control Panel > Display > Adjust ClearType text

cleartype text setting — Activate ClearType text setting in Windows 7

Click on Adjust ClearType text and ensure the checkbox is selected – Turn on ClearType

CLEARTYPE TEXT SETTING CHECKBOX — Select the check box

This will walk you through to select your comfortable text view settings in four different ways. Choose any of these and click on Next.

how to activate cleartype text setting in windows 7 — Walks you through the readability check

At the end, you will have modified and customized the ClearType text technology to suit your eyes.

cleartype text setting changes saved — Finish ClearType text setting changes

That’s all it is to change the setting and make your screen look better. Hope this helped! Please leave your comments if you have any question or general feedback to enhance UX that you may have.

—–

Footnote # 1 . at least for some people. And I am in that ‘some’.

Footnote # 2. for the keyboard shortcut lovers.

How to remove fake followers on Twitter without blocking them

February 14, 2015 by Arun Sarathy 2 Comments

Here’s one of the famous Twitter stories that’s common in any Twitter user’s life:

There are times when someone is following you on Twitter and you are pretty sure that he or she has just a fake Twitter account. Managing Twitter followers can be quite a task especially when your see many dubious accounts, some random account with less than 3 tweets overall in their account with junk followers who seem unrelated.

Just look at their following vs. followers list and you’ll be able to easily understand their credibility in Twitter. They can be easily removed on Twitter in a manual process – I personally see this to be a better way of doing – unless of course you have 100s and 1000s of followers who have followed you using a bot, in which case you can use unfollow Twitter tools and apps like Twitblock.org or Tweepi.com to unfollow them or remove those inactive followers on Twitter accounts from your followers list. These accounts are mostly spam followers on Twitter who randomly follow accounts and then unfollow after a week or two. Let’s now see a simple way to remove or delete a follower on Twitter if you see that the account holder doesn’t contribute much or is having just an egghead or a fake Twitter account.

Ponder more: Top 14 tips for great blogging

This is going to be the best way (manual way) on how to Unfollow on Twitter especially to remove fake Twitter followers :

1. Block the person
2. Go to Blocked Users page
3. Unblock the person

This smoothly removes the person from your followers’ list without blocking that Twitter user profile.

Here’s how to remove fake followers on Twitter from your Android mobile app:

1. Go the person’s account and block by hitting on the gear icon
2. Unblock the person
Game over!

Here are some more related resources which you might find useful:

1. If you are of the geek types, you can check this website – it uses a browser script to find fake and spammy followers on Twitter. Be extra careful with this if you don’t know what you are doing.

2. An in-depth article on removing fake followers on Twitter if you are interesting in knowing this a little more deeper.

3. How to send Tweets that are longer than 140 characters.

4. More tools to try: Untweeps,

5. Why you should follow everyone who follows you on Twitter.

6. 59 Free Twitter tools and Apps to fit any need.

7. 10 Twitter tools used by Social Media experts.

8. 21 Twitter tools that every power user must know of

9. 10 Irresistible tools to help dominate Twitter

Do you know of any other way to remove bulk followers on Twitter? Please let me know through your comments below.

Blog entries

These links are given in no specific order. However, the #1 rank is aptly given, at least in my humble opinion.

Archives page

Commenting and Contacting System

Secure your blog

Change your Permalink structure

About me page