Do popular blogs have to follow SEO in the first place ?

One argument I’ve repeatedly come across is that if your blog is popular, then you don’t need to really work on the SEO part. Very fair observation that but I can’t completely agree, though I’d love to. The reason is that this is a chicken-egg problem. Do you have to first do SEO and then get the site popular, or get the site popular first then do the SEO.

In my opinion, SEO comes first irrespective of whether you’re popular or not. SEO is one of the basic foundations of a website and I can’t think of a reason why it should be ignored. Anyways, the fact is that many popular blogs, while they want to focus more on content, the SEO basics are well taken care of. Let’s dig deeper.

1. Healthy Publishing frequency

One of the major signals to Google, about the authority f your blog is higher publishing frequency. If your blog can churn out 25 quality post a day, that’s no amateur blog. Note that the number is not the sole factor here but the quality factor of each of them. There are several “splogs” out there that copy content from popular blogs from their RSS feeds. But none of them can be counted as “authoritative” as their content is copied and duplicate.

If an upcoming blog, can match up to the biggies with good publishing frequency and original content, then you automatically gets upped to a better authority/trust level with Google.

2. Efficient Interlinking

If you look at any popular blog out there, you’ll see that most of them rely heavily on keyword based interlinking. This means that a clever strategy is behind the whole scene. Interlinking can be done in many ways. From simple “Read more” links to proper keyword based deep linking. The idea is to use the homepage PageRank of the website and leverage it onto inside pages, interlinking them with well targeted keywords.

3. Getting the basics right

The crux of the matter is that with all that overload of content coming in, its impossible to always check for keyword densities and keyword research indexes. Instead, the way out is to create a good basic foundation built strong on SEO and then let everything else fall into place by itself. Many of the popular blogs have the basic SEO metrics covered well in advance even before going full swing with their content. Good amount of time spent building a solid foundation based on SEO is worth all the time you’d spent on it later.

4. No unnecessary focus on keywords

If you watch closely, unlike SEOs who sometimes appear to others as a little too obsessive about keywords, popular blogs does not really focus much on the keywords to the extend of repeating them unnecessarily for the sake of keyword density. The content is unique, rich and social media friendly, not entirely SEO friendly. Even if the authors wanted to, not all the time could they do an SEO formula check on articles. So beyond the basic title/headline optimization I cannot see a scope for detailed keyword analysis or focus.

5. Efficient control of Crawlable space

As a part of getting the basics right, content focused blogs has a huge challenge in front of them, of managing the bots. As important as creating search engine friendly content, is important to manage the bots and controlling them into crawling certain spaces while clearing out others. Webmasters essentially has to have a good grasp about what part of their website is important and what not. If that sounds rude, what part is search engine material and what not. So to enable the bots to crawl those pages/part of the site that’s search engine material, its essential to control them using advanced SEO tool such as Robots.txt files, Nofollow/NoIndex tags etc.

Summary

Essentially, the idea is that popular or not, you need to have the SEO basics in place to build a website, and as and when your blog gets popular, there might be restrictions to the possibility of going into details of keyword research and competition. But the fact is that if you have a good sound SEO foundation, then things will fall into place with the content building in on top of everything. However, the focus should be on building authority and trust with Google with popular, shareable and quality content.

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US-based global research firm comScore said Facebook had moved into the top spot in July, backing up separate research by Indian online monitor ViziSense which showed a similar trend.

Facebook had 20.9 million unique users in India in July, almost three times more than in the same month last year, while Orkut had 19.9 million, according to comScore.

Since Orkut’s India launch in 2004, the website has enjoyed a majority share in the social networking market, mirroring its popularity in Brazil, another giant emerging market.

But online analysts say it has struggled to innovate and has finally succumbed in India to the Facebook machine, which has surpassed the Google service in most developed markets.

“Even though Orkut belongs to Google it is not as cool as the rest of Google, it feels like Orkut is always trying to play catch up in terms of features and functionality,” said leading Indian blogger Kiruba Shankar.

According to comScore India is the seventh largest social networking market, with the audience up 43 percent in the past year.

The firm estimated that there were 945 million unique users of social networking sites in July worldwide, with the United States, China and Germany the biggest markets.

Internet use is much higher in Indian cities where infrastructure is more complete and where more people have access to computers.

In a nation of more than a billion, only around seven million people are broadband Internet subscribers, according to a recent report by consultancy Booz and Company.

Many analysts hope the advent of new high-speed third-generation mobile phone networks will greatly increase Internet usage in the country because far more people have mobile phones than computers.

Between 16 and 20 million new phone subscribers sign up every month and in the past year, the number of mobile customers soared 49 percent to 617.5 million, industry figures show.

In March, Facebook announced a new office in the southern Indian IT hub of Hyderabad, which will deal with online advertising and customer support, much like other Facebook centres in the US and Ireland.

The move was seen as a commitment to the growing market and a sign of its growing importance for the California-based company.

Animesh Nayak, a 32-year-old architect, said he had switched from Orkut to Facebook because the latter site was easier to use.

“I joined Facebook because a lot of my American friends are on it. Orkut does not have an attractive and user-friendly interface like Facebook does”, he told AFP.

However, not all believe Orkut is out of the race in India.

“If we categorise the usage, what I personally see is that smaller cities and towns is where Orkut is most popular,” technology columnist Amit Aggarwal told AFP.

“Orkut is still the most popular networking website in quite a few cities and it is too premature to say that it is dead.”

Use of microblogging site Twitter has also taken off in India, where it registered growth of 239 percent to 3.3 million visitors over the 12 months to July.

Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in his Harvard University dorm room as a networking tool for students, but within months the website was taken up across America and was quickly catapulted into a national obsession.

Source: Yahoo News

Pedram Keyani, a facebook employee writes a detailed blog post about his three years of working at facebook on their blog. Its interesting to read. Pedram writes about how he quit Google and managed to get into facebook and how on the second day of his job, started working on live features. Interestingly, he says that Facebook’s motto of “Move fast and break things” is real.

I’m sure that doesn’t go well with everyone though.

According to Pedram, the key factors at facebook office, that makes it interesting are –

1. Autonomy and Responsibility

2. Focus on Impact

3. Facebook is run by Hackers

4. Growth and Coaching.

Pedram never talks about privacy issues and personal data leaks here. Deliberate, I don’t know, but may be there was nothing like that in the first place. Looks like working at facebook rocks !

You can read the full post here.

The reason: because one odd user had uploaded a video deemed problematic on grounds of ultra-nationalism.

So, that’s probably got to do with politics and some clever chap uploading something “revealing”. What’s interesting is that this order is from an authoritative court in Russia and there is no appeal against it officially.

And what has YouTube to say regarding this ?

YouTube is a responsible online platform. We have global community guidelines to what is and isn’t acceptable. On the site YouTube, our millions of users flag content they deem to be potentially breaching these terms. Flagged videos are reviewed 24×7. If deemed to violate the guidelines, videos are removed from the site.

I agree with YouTube, a single potentially inappropriate video should not lead to the blocking of a legitimate online service offering millions of legitimate, useful, commercial and entertaining videos.

Source

Also fully blocked are ads and mobile access. Image search is partially blocked, as are Google Docs, Google News and Google Groups.

Other sites and apps that were previously and remain blocked include YouTube, search suggestions, Google Sites, Blogger and Picasa.

Google and China have been at odds since at least the beginning of this year, when a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack” was conducted on Google’s corporate infrastructure; the attack originated in China. As a result, the search engine, which had been serving censored search results to comply with the demands of the Chinese government, announced it would no longer be modifying search results.

The company said it would even be willing to pull out of China altogether if search results were to be censored.

However tense relations were between the company and the country, negotiations continued — even past the point where some felt that Google’s stand for freedom of information had been compromised. Our Ben Parr wrote in March:

After Google was hacked, it was put in between a rock and a hard place. Its actions, while still bold, will not change how things are done in China. Its indecisiveness with how to proceed has made the pressure on China all but evaporate.

Earlier this month, we were told that China and Google had reached a satisfactory conclusion to the search-and-censorship negotiations; Chinese authorities had renewed Google’s Internet Content Provider (ICP) license after the company found a loophole which allowed them to display search results and also allowed China’s Golden Shield Project (a.k.a. the Great Firewall) to block those links at will.

Now, however, it seems China/Google relations have once again broken down.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt told press earlier this month, “Our operations in China are completely at the discretion of the Chinese government. I don’t want anyone to be confused about that.”

The only confusion we at Mashable have surrounds questions of timing: Why now? What new developments have caused China to change its position on Google?

As Google continues to lose market share in China to competitor Baidu, we’re sure a few Googlers are wondering the same thing. We’ve reached out to the company for comment and will update this post as more details become available.

UPDATE: A Google spokesperson has told us, “Because of the way we measure accessibility in China, it’s possible that our machines could overestimate the level of blockage. That seems to be what happened last night when there was a relatively small blockage. It appears now that users in China are accessing our properties normally.”

Let’s hope Google and China maintain this rather tenuous status quo. YouTube, search suggestions, Google Sites, Blogger and Picasa are still fully blocked, and other services and features are partially blocked.

Source: Mashable

Ivy had fallen ill last month, and her followers had been kept updated by Pat, the manager of Hillside Manor, over the last few weeks. It was Pat who bore the bad news on Wednesday.

“Ivy passed away peacefully at 12.08 this [Wednesday] morning,” she wrote just after 10 a.m., adding: “I’m sorry it took me so long to tell you but it was a very difficult thing to do.”

Ivy had originally become an internet sensation through Facebook, before switching to Twitter last year.

Her insights into life in a care home warmed the hardest social media user, as she explained the nuances of northern English bakery products — clarifying that parkin “is like ginger cake,” wished tweeters happy birthday and kept readers updated on her consumption of her favourite meal: fish and chips.

The great-grandmother even struck up an unlikely friendship with Peter Andre, meeting him last year and again last month — describing the singer as “wonderful” and One Foot in the Grave actor Victor Meldrew (“a right laugh”).

Followers had perhaps been braced for the worst after a six-day silence from Ivy in early June was broken by Pat informing tweeters that she had been taken ill.

The care home manager kept followers updated as Ivy suffered from jaundice in hospital — updating that a staff member from Hillside Manor had sneaked her in some fish and chips, earlier this month, before writing last Friday that Ivy had returned to the care home.

A further post promised Ivy would return to tweeting this Monday, but the message proved premature, and Twitter’s oldest user passed away in the small hours of this morning.Despite Ivy having been unable to post for almost two months, the sight of “Ivy Bean” trending worldwide less than an hour after the announcement of her death seemed a fitting tribute to a woman whose warmth and simple enjoyment of life proved such a draw to so many. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2010

Source: The Hindu

But there are also a number of additional directories available to further promote RSS feeds to help you increase visitor numbers. I found a list of RSS Directories supplied on DotSauce through a post on Money Making Scoop. The original list is a few months old and include a few urls that no longer work. So I poked around and pulled 36 of the 55 RSS Directories which are functional and easiest to submit, including an addition of my own: Blog Burst.

These RSS directories receive visitors and submissions fairly frequently. I highly recommend checking out #36, Blog Burst. Feeds are manually approved and any blog accepted should receive quality traffic through this service, as some of their clients include Reuters and USA Today.

1. FeedFury
2. FeedBomb
3. Plazoo
4. RSS Micro
5. 2RSS
6. FeedsFarm
7. RSS Feeds
8. Feeds4all
9. Postami
10. Feedest
11. MySpace RSS
    
12. DaytimeNews
13. RSS Feeds Submission
14. MillionRSS
15. Yahoo RSS
16. More News
17. Find RSS
18. Feed Base
19. RSS Motron
20. Octora
21. Blog Digger
22. Feed 24
23. Findory
24. Feed Boy
25. Chordata
26. Golden Feed
27. Read A Blog
28. Newgie
29. Jordo Media RSS
30. RSS Network
31. Ice Rocket
32. Blog Pulse
33. Feeds2Read
34. Feed Shark
35. Feed Plex
36. Blog Burst

Source: susansuarez.com

In July 2009, Yahoo signed a deal with Microsoft, under which Yahoo was to adopt Microsoft’s Bing as the search engine on all Yahoo sites. However, Yahoo only has a minority stake (35%) in Yahoo Japan, while the Japanese telecom giant Softbank owns 40% of the company, meaning that Yahoo didn’t have the final say in the decision.

“Yahoo! Japan made this decision as an independent and separate publicly traded company (…) This decision by Yahoo! Japan does not impact the global rollout and implementation of the Yahoo! search alliance with Microsoft, except in the Japanese market,” said Yahoo in a statement.

Now, in a deal that is likely to be challenged by Microsoft, Yahoo Japan and Google will corner the Japanese search market, in which Bing only has a minute share.

On the outside, however, nothing will change: Yahoo will keep its stake in Yahoo Japan and remain a strategic partner for the company, and Yahoo Japan will continue to use the Yahoo brand.

Source: Mashable

1. Tag other people in status updates

This feature was released earlier this week and is not well understood by the majority of Facebook users. For those of us that are savvy to Twitter, it’s a pretty simple transition as it functions the same way. You call someone out or speak directly to them by typing the @ symbol and then their name in your status update or on someone else’s wall. Facebook has programmed the feature to not only tag them, but also link to the said person’s Facebook page. Once you’ve posted your tag, anyone who sees the status update will see your friends name posted as a hyperlink and have the option of navigating to his or her page.

2. Block people on chat

This feature wasn’t available when Facebook chat launched. As a woman, my initial experience was not always good when up late working – lonely dudes would pop-up to say “hello,” looking to find out what I was “up to tonight.” Creepy. Thankfully FB has finally provided the option to prohibit this from happening. To block people from chat, you have to organize them under one group which you can then choose to be inactive in chat. Be careful though, if they’re filed under another group as well (i.e. “work friends” and “block from chat”),they will still show up in chat under the group that you haven’t blocked!

3. Create a “top friends” list, without an app

That’s right, just like MySpace, you can easily separate your top friends from the rest so everyone can see who your favorite people are, without using an external app! It is a new feature that was introduced when Facebook unveiled their new layout. To edit your top friends, view your own profile and click the “edit” button in the friends section. Type the names of your friends who you want to be permanently highlighted on your friends list and they will remain there until you remove or replace them.

4. Login with your username

Another newly introduced feature, Facebook makes it easier to login by giving you the option of entering your username instead of your email. The ease of this option is especially noticeable when logging in from a mobile device where typing can be time consuming and awkward. Don’t have a username yet? Go to facebook.com/username and pick your vanity URL!
5. Edit the tabs on your profile

Just click the “+” button in your tabs section to choose which applications you’d like easier navigation to. This feature makes it simple to promote a cause that’s important to you or encourage people to join you on YoVille. Oh no, did I really just give advice on how to further promote YoVille?

6. Publicize your event without sending annoying messages

Easy to do, just change the time on your event and everyone on the list will get a notification of the time change in the bottom right hand corner of their homepage. This is a very subtle way to remind people about your event!

7. Select multiple people at a time for Facebook event invites

By default, Facebook doesn’t allow you to invite your whole friends list to your event, obviously as a measure to reduce spam. You can get around this, however, if you take the time to organize all of your friends into specific groups – Facebook does allow you to select all in a given group or network for quick inviting!

8. Restrict your wall activity

If you’re spending too much time looking at your own wall or tired of friends posting inappropriate comments that family and co-workers can see, you can disable wall posts from specific people to keep your reputation, and perhaps sanity, in tact.

9. Use your friend groups to easily send messages

Compose a message on Facebook and easily send to all your friends by typing their names in the ”To” line. The big downside is that you can’t blind carbon copy (bcc) anyone, and anyone who responds will send their message to the whole group. Be cautious when sending group messages and be sure everyone on list would benefit from getting updates and responses from other group members. Otherwise it’s best and more respectful to take the time to send individual messages.

10. Changing Your Privacy Settings

For those of us who use Facebook regularly, we probably know how to do this, but I still run into a lot of people who don’t. If you don’t want the boss to know what you’re “really” doing at work, lump him into a group titled “work friends” and tweak that group’s settings from viewing your status updates and anything else you don’t want them to see. Facebook privacy settings are incredibly specific – you can personalize each list to see, or not see, pretty much anything on your profile, giving you total control over your personal brand.

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Via: DailyBloggr