Google Introduces Colorful searches in Image Search

With just few days of Yahoo Revamping it's Image Search it was now the turn of Google to come up with some very unique feature with it's image searches, and it did with a bang. Google Images introduced the very unique concept of segregating the images by colors. Your images can be in RED, or BLUE, or GREEN etc, Google Image Search will recognize it and will display accordingly as the the color selected. The user can use Google Image color filter in image searches.

I did image search for ROSE, and found these interesting images, starting from showing in all colors


To Purple,


To Yellow,

To Red,


It's so much fun to see the type of images with specific colors. It not only applies to flowers, animals etc, it applies to everything labelled as image.

Not only this you can further segregate your search results to new refinements to

1. Images of all sizes - which is further refined as


• Extra Large
• Large
• Medium
• Small


2. Any Content - which is further refined as


• News Content
• Faces
• Clip Arts
• Line Drawings
• Photo Content

So, what are you waiting for, start enjoying the colorful experience today!

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13 Best URL Shortening Services

These days there is the necessity for making the website URL's to be short in order to post more content on the social media sites like Twitter etc, where you need to tell in 140 characters what you are doing and can place a URL for your blog, etc in those same 140 characters. So as such it becomes important to reduce the length of the URL, to make the update more informative.

There are a many websites which offer shortening of your long web addresses into a tiny short URL, and that short URL will be redirecting to the main web address for that particular content. Here is the list of some of the best websites offering URL Shortening Services, here we go

1) BUDURL






BudURL is more than just a url shrinking tool – a lot more. Once a url has been turned into a BudURL, you can track click information that will reveal a tremendous amount of information about the click activity of each link.


2) BIT.LY





bit.ly allows users to shorten, share, and track links (URLs). Reducing the URL length makes sharing easier - long links can break or consume extra characters in a short messaging environment. bit.ly can be accessed through its website, bookmarklets, and a robust and open API. bit.ly is also integrated into several popular third-party tools such as Tweetdeck. A more full list of third party tools can be found at on the bit.ly blog. Unique user-level and aggregate links are created, allowing users to view complete, real-time traffic and referrer data, as well as location and metadata. Tracking stats are available on the bit.ly site by clicking on the "Info+" link, or just adding a "+" sign to the end of any bit.ly link (for example, http://bit.ly/n0og+).


3) Tiny URL






Are you sick of posting URLs in emails only to have it break when sent causing the recipient to have to cut and paste it back together? Then you've come to the right place. By entering in a URL in the text field below, we will create a tiny URL that will not break in email postings and never expires.


4) TWEETBURNER






Enter the URL you'd like to shorten, share and track


5) ADJIX






Shorten a long link, embed an ad, and tweet it. Adjix is a way for people to create short links to Web sites, tweet them, track clicks, and earn revenue.

Adjix also ties in very nicely with Twitter using our Adjix2Twitter feature that allows you to tweet a link now or have it scheduled to be sent later from multiple Twitter accounts.


6) CLI.GS






Short URLs with analytics, social media monitoring, and geotargeting


7) URLBORG






Short URL's done right


8) TR.IM






Trim your long URL's


9) IDEK.NET






One click away from short URL's and easy click statistics


10) SNURL






Snippetty Snip Snip


11) IS.GD






Compress that Address


12) SHORTNA.ME






shortna.me generates unique short URLs allowing users to track the clicks on their links without creating an account.


13) SHORT.IE






Shorten any URL right now


TO ADD SOME MORE URL SHORTENING SERVICES WEBISTES

1. eb.cx
   
2. elfurl.com
   
3. shorl.com
   
4. url.fm
   
5. shurl.org
   
6. qurl.net
   
7. notlong.com
   
8. shortlinks.co.uk
   
9. url123.com
   
10. 1tiny.com
    
11. 301url.com
    
12. 6url.com
    
13. ataja.es
    
14. babyurl.com
    
15. digbig.com
    
16. doiop.com
    
17. flingk.com
    
18. lin.kz
    
19. link.toolbot.com
    
20. linkezy.com
    
21. linktrim.com
    
22. lnk.in
    
23. makeashorterlink.com
    
24. metamark.net
    
25. minilien.com
    
26. o-rly.net
    
27. paulding.net
    
28. shurl.net
    
29. simurl.com
    
30. smcurl.com
    
31. snipurl.com
    
32. tighturl.com
    
33. tinyclick.com
    
34. tinylink.com
    
35. url.etusivu.net
    
36. urlcut.com
    
37. urlmask.com
    
38. urlx.org
    
39. w3t.org
    
40. yatuc.com
    
41. yep.it

Benefits of Shortening the URL's

There are a several benefits that can be taken into consideration for the shortening of the URLs,

1. The first and the major advantage is that due to the shortening of the URL, the user gets more option to put the content on the social media sites like TWITTER, which have word count restrictions within them.
2. These URL shortening services provide lot of features within themselves. It's not just that the URL is shortened, it's much bigger than that.
3. URL Shortening provides the user with social media monitoring, and geotargeting.
4. Track your clicks generated due to the URL shortening.
5. Many URL shortening services uses 301 redirects, so you don't have to worry about the search engine benefits

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Google Analytics Checklist

Google Analytics is the best online tool available to track down your visitors. Moreover it's free and does not require any set up costs also. All requir is to install the tracking code on the pages to be tracked of the website, just before the end body tag of the page.

Here in this post I have tried to mention the basic required Google Analytics Checklist, which is the best way to get started for keeping your visitors tracked. I found this post very informative as well as interesting, so thought of mentioning it on the blog itself.

Google Analytics Checklist

Getting Started

Installing Tracking Code : Install the tracking code and start viewing the reports in 24hrs

Data Interpretation : Learn how to interpret the data on the Analytics Videos on Youtube

Getting Started Guide : Explore the interface, learn how to read basic reports

Custom Reporting

Custom Reporting : The cool feature which allows you to drag and drop the boxes, and create custom reports for your campaigns

Creating Customized Email Reporting : You can send regular reports to the emails

Maximising Online Advertising

Linking to Adwords : Link your Adwords account with Google Analytics Account, monitor the Adwords Revenue, conversions and keep a track on the ROI of the campaigns

Optimizing Keywords : Learn tips and tricks to maximize your advertising spent

Tagging Other Campaigns : Track conversions on banner ads, email marketing, and other marketing initiatives

Tracking Ecommerce : Link ecommerce performance to keywords and marketing campaigns for details on ROI

Advanced Segmentation : Define custom segments to isolate traffic types by metrics important to your business

Exploring Advanced Features

Setting up Goals : See conversion rates for ads, visitor segments etc

Tracking Flash : See for Adobe Flash Tracking

Analytics Help

Google Analytics Help Center : Read FAQ,s to get more oon Google Analytics

Ask a Question : Post questions and gethelp from experts on Forum

Contact a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant : Get professional fee based help

Watch more Analytics Videos : Learn about new features, keyword optimization etc

Keeping in mind the above points wont make it difficult to use and install the Google Analytics Code, and tracking down the visitors the the website.

Source: Google Analytics Blog

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Yahoo Image Search Revamped

Yahoo has customized it's image search and is now providing with the very trendy and eye catchy larger view of the image for the users.

The new sleek interface of the image comes with the image preview at the left along with the image size, and the information about the image (where the actual image is hosted). On to the right there are other options of the images. And to the bottom there is the full preview of the image.

I personally feel this to be very nice and appealing to users, and more than that it makes the search more trendy and interesting. Go ahead and try your own.

New Image Search Preview



This is what the new improved search for images look like,




Source : YSearchBlog

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How to Optimize for Singular and Plural Keywords

When it comes to optimizing the webpage for a singular and a plural keyword, it becomes difficult to do the same. There are techniques which can be applied to achieve the desired optimization of the page, like creating two pages, one for a singular keyword and other for the plural one.

But at times it's not possible always to create the pages, and then optimize them accordingly. Moreover those pages will be nearly same and will make less sense to the users. Say for example,

Keyword 1 - [SEO Advantage]
Keyword 2 - [SEO Advantages]

So creating two pages wont make much difference to the users, and on the other hand will be carrying much of the same information.

Example
Title tag using both the keywords -

SEO Advantage, Top SEO Advantages

but it looks rather spammy and may not yeild desired results.

So here is the problem, but the titles of the webpage can be optimized. Here's the trick;

• Use both the keywords in such a manner so that the TITLE should make some sense to the users,
• The Title tag should not look like keyword stuffed

The alternative to the above situation is,

Title - SEO Advantage: Get higher rank with SEO Advantages

So that's the solution for optimizing the title for the singular and pulral keywords for a webpage. Just the focus for it should be putting some extra words and framing out a sentence, which will be more apt.

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Best Firefox Addons for Webmasters

Firefox is said to be the

"Paradise for Webmasters"

And I do believe in that, not because I am a frequent user of Firefox and love the browser very much, but because of the functionality and the features Firefox provides are just mind blowing.


Firefox comes with such a vast list of addons for every user online, weather it be a programmer or a normal user there is something or the other for every one.


Here I am going to provide the list of the Best Firefox Addons for Webmasters. So, I go my list for the webmaster addons provided by firefox,


5 Best Firefox Addons for Webmasters

1) Google Tool Bar for Firefox
I would like to give the first credit in the list to the Google Tool Bar for Firefox. As we all know about the feature and the benefits Google Toolbar provides is just awesome. There are some worth mentioning like,

• Google Toolbar Page Rank - A measure to value the relevancy of the webpage by providing it a Page Rank. It goes from 0 (least) to 10 (the maximum)
• Cached Snapshot of the Page - which shows the date and time, along with the snapshot of the webpage, when last Google bot visited the site, and what all on the webpage was indexed.
• Similar Pages - lists the pages similar to the website online.
• Backward Links - is a measure of the websites linking to the particular website.

If you don't have one, then Download Google Toolbar

2) SEO Book Toolbar
I would like to give the SEO Toolbar the second preference of mine. It's very handy and comes up with a lot of SEO Tools which are very helpful in analyzing the website. Just to list some important ones,

• Free Rank Checker - The free rank checker tool checks the rank of the multiple keywords for Google, Yahoo and MSN, and search for the top 20 pages result for the domains.
• SEO X-Ray - Gives the X-ray report for the website for which you are looking for. It provides the Title, Description, Keywords and the Link analysis for a particular domain.
• Google Page Rank
• Links To Domains
• Page Links
• Directory Links
• Site Age
• Monthly Uniques
• Est Traffic Value
  

Not tried it yet, trust me you won't regret Download SEO Toolbar

3) Greasemonkey
I personally like this addon in firefox. It helps to get the numbered Google Search results along with MSN. It helps to customize the webpage. Believe me it's very helpful while analyzing the website.

Download Greasemonkey Firefox Addon

4) Search Status
Search Status is another wonderful addon for firefox. It helps webmasters to analyze various aspects of a website. To list them

• Google Pagerank
• Alexa Rank
• Compete Ranking
• Link Report
• Meta Tags
• Robots.Txt
• Archive
• Whois
• Sitemap.xml
• Seomoz Linkscape Mozrank Anywhere In Your Browser
• Keyword Density Analyser
• Keyword/Nofollow Highlighting
• Backward/Related Links

where every feature has it's specific use in Search Engine Optimization

Download Search Status Firefox Addon

5) Web Developer
This addon provides adds a menu and a various web developer tools.

Downlaod Web Devloper Firefox Addon

These addons and many many more addons make Firefox so useful to the webmasters, developers and to users.

WILD CARD ENTRY

I would also like to introduce one more very useful addon for Firefox, which is very beneficial for webmasters,

OY-OY Search Engine Tools for Firefox
This add has extremely all the functionality required by the webmaster to do the analysis of the website. You can have a look at these,

Google
o Backlinks (link:-query)
o Backlinks count per datacenter
o Cached page
o Cache date of the page per datacenter
o Indexed pages (site:-query)
o Indexed page count (per datacenter)
o Pages in the supplemental index
o Pages in the supplemental index (per DC)
o Related pages (related:-query)
o Translation (translate:-query)
o PageRank check
o PageRank check per DC
o Check for faked PageRank (via SEOlogs.com)
o Redirect through google.com (check for hacked sites acting upon google.com referrers)

* Yahoo!
o Backlinks (link:-query)
o Indexed pages (site:-query)
o Domain-wide Backlinks (linkdomain:-query)
o Secret Site Information
o Indexed pages (via Site-Explorer)
o Backlinks (via Site-Explorer)

* MSN/Live.com
o Backlinks (link:-query)
o Indexed pages (site:-query)
o Domain-wide Backlinks (linkdomain:-query)
o Domain-wide outbound links (linkfromdomain:-query)

* Alexa
o Overview
o Traffic
o Related sites
o Links

* Mass-Check
o Backlinks (Google, Yahoo, MSN/Live)
o Indexed pages (Google, Yahoo, MSN/Live)
o Domain-wide backlinks (Yahoo, MSN/Live)

* Page-Information
o Analyze links on page
o Keyword Density
o Spider Simulator
o Page title and headers
o Server response headers
o Page availability (via watchmouse.com)
o Page uniqueness (via Yahoo/oy-oy.eu)

* Site-Information
o robots.txt
o Check DMOZ
o eKstreme Deep-Link Ratio
o Archive.org / Way-Back-Machine
o Domain WHOIS lookup (via domaintools.com)
o Server Reverse-IP lookup - which sites on the same server (via SEOlogs.com)
o Server Reverse-IP lookup - which sites on the same server (via domaintools.com)
o Server Geo-Location lookup (via maxmind.com)
o Update Server data (via netcraft.com)
o DNS Report (via dnsstuff.com)
o DNS Timing (via dnsstuff.com)
o DNS Traversal (via dnsstuff.com)
o Server ping (via just-ping.com)

* Other functions
o Spell-Check (english, german, spanish, french, italian)
o Geotargeted Google Search

Don't have OY OY Search Engine Tools Addon for Firefox, download one for yourself.


You might also be interested in

• SEO for Firefox Addon
• Great Firefox Addons

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SEO Concepts

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the key to the success to any businesses that are online. Search Engine Optimization is a process to promote the business/website online in an organic way, so that the optimized website shows in the top results for the optimized keyword, in the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.

So as such it's of so much importance to optimize your website and further most important thing is how to optimize the website. This post relates to all the major optimizing techniques which if followed, will never let you or your website down.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Concepts

Title Tag
The TITLE TAG is the most important tag as SEO point of view. It helps to create the theme of the webpage to the search engine spiders and users eye. It defines the title of the web page.

The title tag is located in the head section of the website, and is shown as the heading of the website in the search results listing. As such the title is very important, and it should be created while considering the them of the webpage and at the max 2-3 important keywords for the page.

The title tag should not be stuffed with keywords, as it's considered spam by the search engines and would lead to penalization of the webpage. Furthermore, the title tag should not be more than 70 words. As anything more than that would be ignored while considering your page for the search engine results. The best title tag consists of characters between 10 - 65.

Another aspect while creating the Title tag is, it should not consist of the keyword which cannot be found at all on the page whose title is that. As doing this weakens the strength of the webpage, and the impact on the targeted keywords. Remember to place the most targeted keyword phrases at the beginning of the title.

Meta Description Tag
The description tag is the second most important tag, of course after the title tag. The Meta Description tells the visiting spider about the theme of the page, and helps in providing the relevant information to the user if he is searching to the related information to your website. The description tag provides a 159 characters description of the webpage (with the spaces included) in the search engine listings.

The description tag should start with the main targeted keyword of the page and should not be less than 50 characters and more than 159. It should be noted that lot of keyword stuffing in the description tag may lead to or considered as SPAM. So it should be avoided, generally speaking the keyword should be repeated no more than thrice in the tag. The optimum Keyword Density for the title tag is about 5 to 10%. The description should clearly describe the webpage and the purpose of the web page.

Meta Keywords Tag
The meta keyword tag is also considered as an important tag, in the search engine consideration of the website. It lists the important keyword phrases for the website. The point to be noted here is the standard limit for the tag, which is nearly 50 to 70 words or 285 - 510 characters. Many search engines don't give importance to the keyword tag but still it is helpful to give consideration for the site.

The most important keywords should be placed at the beginning of the tag, and that the keyword should be there on the webpage at least once other wise it can be considered as SPAM.

Header Tags
The header tags specifies the heading for a page and is as such makes a page catchy to the user and to the search engine spider. Header tag clearly tells the search engine spiders about the theme of the page. The Header tag should focus on the main target keyword phrase for the site. As being told the keyword should be in the very first heading on the page, to increase the prominence of the page.

Please note that don't try to stuff to stuff your heading tag with many or irrelevant to the page content keywords, and not to put multiple H1 tags as it is considered as SPAM. Rather than using multiple H1 tags, you can break down the headings as H2, H3 etc. They should follow the hierarchy as H1, H2, H3 etc.

Alt Attributes
Using alt attribute for the nomenclature of the image is one of the best option to tell the search engine spider about the image. Using the descriptive tags with keywords is very important from SEO point of view. Don't try to stuff alt tags with keywords so as to be considered as SPAM by the search engines.

Phrase Elements

Using the semantical tags 'strong' and 'em' tags for targeted keywords within the visible content of your pages is quite helpful.

Content
Content is the as important as any of those of titles and descriptions for the webpage. A minimum of 200 and a maximum of 700 words should be there as the content for the webpage. Pages with too less content are not considered as important pages and are a cause of page rank to dilute.

Dead/Broken Links
Check your website for the dead links or broken links. These links are referred to carry negative impact for the website, both in terms or rankings and reputation for the website.

Canonicalization
The URL Canonicalization is the process of picking the best url when there is a choice to select from more than one url. This mainly happens with the home page url's. Many websites carry more than one home page url, like index.html or index.htm etc, to avoid this use redirect to one url and give it the most importance.

Sitemap
Sitemaps are a way to tell the search engine bots as well as to users the important pages in the website. An XML sitemap is generated in order to inform the search engine spiders about the important pages in the website along with the priority for those pages. While the HTML sitemaps are typically for the users to give the clearer picture of the website to the users. Both the sitemaps have their importance, and both should be used.

If the site consists of too many pages to be listed in the sitemap, then the sitemap should be broken into sub-sitemaps with links no more thna 100 on easch page. Google recommends only 100 per page.

Follow these SEO Concepts & your website highly ranked, with increased traffic, and hence more leads.

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Importance of 3 Way Link Building

3 way link building in layman terms can be said as

"Website A links to Website B, and Website B links to Website C and therefore Website C links to Website A"

Seems somewhat similar like an old concept right ;), yep indeed it is the zeroth law of thermodynamics, which states that

"If object A is in thermal equilibrium with object B, and object B is in thermal equilibrium with object C, then object C is also in thermal equilibrium with object A." - Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics



Any ways keeping concepts of Physics aside, and on to the original topic, this is what a pictorial view can be

Importance of 3 Way Link Building Technique

Let us see why we should do 3 way link building, and what benefits it carries, which can give a better picture to understand what actually 3 way is. Here we are,

- The first thing in 3 way link building is that it's not counted as reciprocal link building technique, which is counted of less importance these days by search engines. It's due to the fact that website A (for example) is linking to website B, and website B (say for example) to website C, then a link is established from website C to website A. This is a pure form of one way link building, which is considered as a very important factor for the ranking by the major search engines.

- The second important thing, Google will not penalize you for using this method, as long as all the sites are somewhat related.

In the end, 3 websites have links to each other, and yet none of them are reciprocal, or 2 way which search engine spiders don't prefer.

3 Way Link Building Strategies

This illustrates how to go for a 3 way approach,

• Before starting your 3 way campaign you should check the relevancy of the websites.
• Add the link to the other website based on the relevancy and then ask them to add yours.
• Provide the information for your link with the exact HTML code and how it should appear on their web page.
• Remember to place the target keywords as anchor texts in your link.
• Once your link is live, check website and make sure that your link is in accordance as required.
• Check for the backlinks of the competitors in Google and Yahoo. Place a request for the websites who are linking to them.
• You can also purchase links from relevant websites. This works trust me.
• Use Natural link building techniques to promote your website.

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