The 11 Best Tips For StumbleUpon Traffic

The other day I was looking through my Google analytic data and discovered that I am getting around 50 visitors a day from StumbleUpon. I have never discussed how to get StumbleUpon traffic in my blog post because I don’t spend much time in StumbleUpon community.


But I remember last year, I did spend sometime in StumbleUpon community and submitted some of my blog posts to stumbleUpon. Also, many users post their classified user pages in stumbleupon. If you want to drive traffic to your classified user pages and websites using stumbleUpon, follow the 7 tips I have used to drive stumbleUpon traffic.

What is Stumble Upon? StumbleUpon is a web 2.0 community site for discovering and sharing web pages, videos and photos. StumbleUpon works by downloading a toolbar that allows you rate web pages as thumbs up or thumbs down.

You need to start by submitting your web site or user pages to stumble upon. Download the tool bar and browse to your web page. Then click I like it! button to include your page to stumbleUpon.

stumble-upon-tool-bar

Build Friend Circles. You need to add friends. More friends you add, more people will see your newly added pages. Find people who have similar interests as yours. You want to share links with people who are interested in your niche. There are many ways to build your friend circle. StumbleUpon has a detail how to guide about discovering similar people.

Participate: Like any other social media web sites, you need to participate to make the site work for you. Your goal should be to join a few groups, post reviews, subscribe to your friends links, and rate some of your friends websites.

Share Links: Besides your own websites, share others web pages also. Submit your own website pages frequently with a mix of other people’s web pages. Sharing interesting and useful links in your friend circle will improve your credibility and, in turn, people will positively rate your own pages. Avoid linking to the home page of a web site. Link to a specific page on a website.

Write Positive Article About Stumble Upon related to your niche. For example, if you’re in gardening niche. Write an article about how you discovered great gardening tips using stumbleUpon or the top 10 stumblers on gardening niche. Use your imagination to pick a topic that throws some positive lights on stumbleUpon related to your niche.

Use Appropriate Topic: When you submit a web page, StumbleUpon asks you to pick a topic for your web page. It is important that you pick the right topic if you want to get a lot of thumbs up for your page. You don’t want to share your gardening related web page to people who are interested in golf.

Use Plenty of Tags: Use multiple tags for the same article. If you have done your keyword research, it will be easy. Just use the keywords as your tags. For example, you can use gardening, rose gardening, organic gardening, etc. for your gardening article.

Send Personal Message: Find the person who has originally stumbled your story and send a thank you note to him/her. If this person has a blog, subscribe to his blog and share a few web pages of his site.

Use StumbleUpon Badges on every page of your site. It will help others stumble your pages easily.

Use Magnetic Title For Your Article and Blog Post. Check out some of my blog posts about how to craft attention grabbing titles.

Share Funny images and videos. Humor is always popular among web users.

Personalize Your Profile Page. Fill out your profile page completely. Use your picture in your profile page. Add your likes and provide some introduction about yourself. Add your blog URL.


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21 Ways To Build links For Free And Get Higher Search Engine Rankings

Getting links to your site from websites outside your domain is the most important part of building back links and higher search engine rankings. The more back links you get, the higher your site will climb in the search engines. I have discussed many techniques on how to leverage web links for higher search engine rankings. I have decided to create a list of popular techniques used by today’s online marketers to get back links. You can always refer to this list as a guide and implement one technique at time to rank higher in search engine result pages.

First, I want to get one misconception out of the way. Many people equate building back links to reciprocal linking. In the case of reciprocal links, you need to provide a link on your site in exchange for a back link on another person’s site. Reciprocal linking is two way linking and not a very effective tool for link building. The techniques discussed here are all one way link building. You don’t have to provide any links to anybody to get back links to your site.

1. Post Classified Ads. The easiest methods. Chose a few sites only that provides ad renewal. Submit half a dozen ads and renew them regularly. Classifieds ads expire and if you don’t renew them, your ad will be gone along with the links.

2. Join A Webring It is a very old techniques and I have used them extensively in the past. A webring is a collection of websites in a particular niche linked together in circular fashion. Vistiors can jump to a website clicking on link in a website that is the part of the webring family. Check out a popular webring site called webring.com

3. Get Listed In Web Directories. Web directories were popular for searches prior to Google. But they still help get links to your site. When you submit to a web directory, make sure that your site is submitted to the relevant category. Here is a list of free web directories.

4. Create an eBook and List it in eBook Directories. Create an ebook and insert your website link in it. Creating an ebook is not difficult. There are many ways to do it on a week-end. Check out my post on how to make ebooks for almost free. Once you create an ebook, you can list in eBook directories. Here is a list of ebook directories where you can list your ebook for free.

5. Create a Forum and Get Listed in Forum Directories. There are lots of free software available to create a forum in your site. Forum is great for interacting with your site visitors. If you’re using a web hosting with cPanel, you can install a forum in one click using Fantastico. Once you have a forum, get it listed in forum directories. Big-boards.com is the largest forum directory and I have written a post about it in forum marketing. For a list of forum directories, check out this website.

6. Use Yahoo Answers. Posting thoughtful answers on Yahoo Answers and including a link to your website is still one of the best way to get a back link from a very authoritative source. Check out my 13 Steps Formula for driving traffic using Yahoo! Answers

7. Create a Blog and Get It Listed In Blog Directories. I have emphasized the importance of creating blog many times. You can create a blog for free using Blogger. Once you have a blog, get it listed in blog directories. Here is a list of blog directories.

8. Get Links From .edu and .gov Blogs. Search engines consider .edu and .gov domains as authoritative. Find blogs in these domains that are related to your site’s topic and leave thoughtful comments with back links. To find .edu and .gov domains in your niche, do a Google search using the syntax: site:.gov inurl:blog “your niche keyword”. Check out my article on how to get inbound links from government and university sites. If you have a relative in a government jobs and/or in an university, ask them to create a blog and put a back link to your websites.

9. Post Reviews Amazon and Barnes and Nobles will let you post your links on the reviews. If you have purchased a book recently, create a review and post a link back to your site. You have to be clever to make the relevant.

10. Write And Submit Articles. I have written a definitive guide on article marketing. It is one of the most popular online marketing technique. You cannot go wrong with this method. It has helped me lot in making my site popular.

11. Write Testimonials with Your Link. Have you recently bought a digital product and found it useful? Write a testimonial, put your links and send it to the product creator to included in his testimonials page.

12. Comment on YouTube Videos. When you watch a YouTube video, don’t leave the site without posting a comment with your link. You have already spent an x amount of time watching the video, spend another two minutes to build links to your web site.

13. Review on Script Directories. There are lots of free script directories and if you use them to download scripts for your websites, why not spend an additional few minutes to write a review with a link to your web site? Hotscripts.com is a popular script directory where you can write reviews on scripts.

14. Post in Document Sharing Sites. Create a small report or power point presentation with links to your site and upload them in document sharing sites. You can also post comments with links in some sites. Here is a list of document sharing sites.

15. Get Listed In Free Stuff Directories. The same concept applies here. Give something for free and get listed in free stuff directories. The best thing to give for free is a digital product like a report or an ebook. Here is a list of free stuff site

16. Submit Press Releases. I have discussed this topic in the past. You can submit a press release whenever there is a major event in your business. A major event is in the eye of the beholder. A major even can be adding a new feature to your site, increased in web traffic to your site or increased in revenue. Here is a list of free press release submission sites and how to submit a press release to get back links and traffic. Want to write an effective press release, check out my earlier post five steps to writing an effective press release.

17. Forum Posting. This is also a popular methods to drive traffic and build back links. For a detailed discussions on this topic, check out my free definitive guide to forum marketing

18. Get Back Links From Authoritative Sites. Getting back links from authoritative web 2.0 sites like social news and bookmarking sites, or article publishing sites are very hot now. Check out my list of 25 Sites For Web Traffic From High Page Rank Back links, 16 Authoritative Sites For Oneway links, 16 more high traffic, high page rank sites for free one way links

19. Upload Videos and Leave Comments in Video Sharing Sites. Just like the popular YouTube site, there are other video sharing sites where you can upload your videos and leave comments on others’ videos with back link to your sites. For a list of video sharing sites, click here.

20. Create a Link Triangle. Using Squidoo, HubPages and your web site, you can create a link triangle, for example link from HubPages to Squidoo lenses to your website. I have discussed how to implement this technique for rapid increase in search engine traffic in my post A Submit Free URL Strategy For Search Engine Traffic

21. Create a Top Site List. At one time top sites were very popular but they are less visible now. It is a list of sites that exchange links to each other and the sites sending the most traffic ranks on the top of the list. To implement this, you need a top site script and there are plenty of them available for free. Just do a Google search. The most important thing in implementing s Top Site list is make the sites relevant. Create a top site list in your own niche and only accept sites that are relevant to your topic.

There are many other ways to build oneway links to your site. You need to be on alert and whenever you see an opportunity, drop your link. Don’t think too mch about dofollow, nofollow or such other things that you have read in internet marketing forums. For me, a link is a link. Once your links are about, it will spread to other sites and some of them will be dofollow. If you are going to concentrate on dofollow links only, check out this dofollow blog

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How to Drive Traffic Using Yahoo! Answers

What is rs is an question-and-answer (Q&A) site created by Yahoo! in 2005. More thaYahoo! Answers? Claimed to the be the World’s biggest think tank, Yahoo! Answen two million people regularly visit the site. Now you can see the potential of this web property in driving targeted traffic to your web site for free. Since its inception, it has become popular among internet marketers to drive traffic to their websites. Other entrepreneurial online marketers have cashed on the popularity of the site by publishing e-books that guide you how to use the service for website traffic.


You don’t need to buy any e-books to use the Yahoo! Answers and leverage it for your web site traffic and link building. It is free and simple to use. And as with any other traffic techniques, you should not focus all your efforts on this one site alone. You can also use the site for getting answers to any questions you may have in more than 20 Yahoo! Answers categories. By sharing your answers to others questions regularly, you can also establish yourself as an expert and build your brand.

If you already have a Yahoo! account, you can sign in to Yahoo! Answers using your Yahoo! user name and password. I don’t know anybody who who does not have a Yahoo! account. If you’re one of those few people who have ignored all the Yahoo! services and have never created a Yahoo! account, sign up now.

1. Start with a top level Yahoo! Answer category that you’re passionate about and interested in. If you’re are interested in gardening and have a gardening blog, you should start with home and gardening category. Don’t limit yourself to the top category alone, select all the subcategories also.

2. You don’t have to be an expert. If you are interested in a topic, you can do a Google search and get the the right answers to almost all the questions posted in Yahoo! Answers. Try to be the first person to answer a question and answer it correctly.

3. Don’t post vague and false answers. It is always better to verify your answers before posting it. Check even the spelling and grammatical errors before posting your answers otherwise people will doubt your answer even if it is the correct one.

4. If you have verified your answers using some authoritative sites like Wikipedia, CNN, MSNBC, Yahoo!, university websites, respected journals, etc., post the link to the source of your answer.

5. The beauty of the Yahoo! Answers service is that you can post links in your answers. But don’t post links to your websites always. Link to your contents posted in other sites like your articles published in article directories, Squidoo lenses, hubpages, blogs, digg, stumbleupon, YouTube videos etc and direct the user to your contents for more information.

6. Try to avoid opinionated political questions but if you have the fact from an authoritative source, post the link without posting your own opinion.

7. Yahoo! Answer is also a gold mine for keyword and market research on any topic. By scanning the questions in one topic, you will be able to know what information people are looking for. You can make a blog post detailing your research on that question and then link it in your answers.

8. Keep your answer succint and to the point. Just don’t provide a link to the answer. Provide as much information as possible to resolve the question and links for more information and validation only.

9.Even if the answer is simple, don’t call names and mention how stupid the question is or how simple the answer is.

10. Yahoo! Answers is a community sharing site. participate by answering and voting on others answers.

11. Use keywords in your answers.

12. Avoid answering lots of questions in one day. Answer no more than five questions a day and do it for no more than three times a week.

13. Never, ever try to sell any thing in your answer.

If you know any other techniques, please post in the comments.
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Understanding Different Types Of Hosting

While selecting any hosting plan you might come across different terminologies. Every type of hosting is different from other in some way or the other. In this article, I am going to explain you about all types of hosting so that you can easily know which hosting you should go for. I’ll tell you about advantages and disadvantages of each and every type of hosting. Lets start :

Shared Hosting

It is one of the basic type of hosting and is also known as Virtual Hosting. As the name says, in this type of hosting many websites are hosted on one single web server. In the server, various partitions are made and each site is allocated with bandwidth and space.

Advantages

Shared Hosting can be available at an extremely cheap rate i.e $4.95/mo. This is the main advantage of shared hosting. Most of the new Blogger start with this type of hosting and as they start getting huge traffic they move to better hosting.

Disadvantages

Most of the hosting companies like Dreamhost or Hostgator provides Shared Hosting with unlimited space and bandwidth but they do not tell that Shared Hosting comes with limited CPU usage. Yes, this type of hosting is not designed for high traffic. This is a big drawback.

In brief : If you want to start a blog or a small business website then Shared Hosting is best option for you.

Grid Hosting

Grid Hosting is same as Shared Hosting but it overcome the disadvantages in Shared Hosting. When your site gets huge traffic, the load is then divided among different systems. The image below will help you in understanding Grid Hosting more.

Image Credits : Gogrid

Advantages

Here, you do not have to worry about site load, you site will be up always even if your site takes up too many processing units.

Disadvantages

The only thing you have to worry about is “bill”. Too many resources = larger bill. I think, this is really a disadvantage.

Reseller Web Hosting

This hosting is for those who want to start their own hosting company. It is a type of hosting in which the account holder has the right to sell hosting to their own customers. You can get reseller hosting at about $25 per month.

VPS (Virtual Private Server)

It is also known as Virtual Dedicated Server(VDS) and is same as Shared Hosting. In this type of hosting, a main physical server is partitioned into different servers that works as an independent dedicated machine. Features of VPS are :

• Each server can be rebooted individually
• Each account has access to the root
• Each server has a particular RAM and CPU usage allocated
• Can host many sites on the same server

Now one thing you will ask is that why this type of hosting is termed as “Virtual”. That is because the server your own is not actually a private server but it appears to you as a private one.

Advantages

It gives a lot of options to users and users can monitor and administer their own server.

Dedicated Server

The name says it all, in this type of hosting, you are given the whole server and is not shared with anyone. You have full control over the server. You can select your own operating system.

Advantages

• Best option for you if you have multiple high traffic websites
• It can be called as the most reliable type of hosting

If you are planning to start your own blog and looking for hosting company, I recommend you Dreamhost or Hostgator. Just buy Shared Hosting and as your blog starts getting traffic you can move to Grid or VPS. We will be more happy to have your comments on Which hosting you like the most and why?

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How To Detect And Fool Keyloggers

You might have heard about a dangerous application called Keylogger. Its a very tricky tool to record your key strokes in a notepad file. Whenever you type anything using keyboard, this software stores all your key strokes. If you access Internet from any cyber cafe or any public PC, this post is must for you.

There are many keyloggers that are not detected by anti virus and other security applications, so today I am sharing few tricks with which you can fool keyloggers easily.

1) Use Virtual Keyboard : Whenever you access PC from any cyber cafe always use Virtual Keyboard or On Screen Keyboard for entering password.

How to enable virtual keyboard : If you are using Windows XP, Click on Start >> All Programs >> Accessories <<>> On Screen Keyboard. Have a look :

Just use mouse clicks for entering password and username. By using on screen keyboard, keylogger will never detect your key strokes, thus your account will be safe.

2) Anti Keylogger : If you do not know whether keylogger is installed or not, you can use this software called Elite Anti Keylogger. It has more than 1000 known keyloggers and will warn you immmeditely it detects any keylogger.

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Internet Safety For Children - How Do We Keep Kids Safe

The subject of children internet safety is a very important one. It is a topic that needs to be addressed to all parents in all homes. What can we do as parents to help ensure children's internet safety?

1. Learn to talk to your children. The simple lack of communication is one of the biggest reasons why children enter websites they are not supposed to or do things online that they are not supposed to be doing. Why? The reason is some children are never given the internet safety talk. Consequently, children end up not knowing that they were not supposed to visit a particular site or that they were not supposed to set up meetings with any strangers. If parents would engage with their children and communicate with them about the dos and don'ts of online browsing child internet safety would become less of a problem.

2. Position your home computer in the right place. Now what I mean by this is that the family computer needs to be in an open space where everyone can see it. If you are a parent make sure that you do not put the home computer in a place like the basement if you hardly visit the basement. Observing this rule of thumb will definitely help internet safety for kids. When children know that they may be caught browsing a website that they should not be on they will be less likely to open it.

3. Create offline activities for your children. Between the T.V. and internet children are becoming batmen and women who stay in a cave all day. The more time kids spend on the internet the more they are likely to access the wrong material or engage in conversations with the wrong people. Try to involve your children in outdoor activities like soccer or basketball to keep the time online at a minimal. Not only will they get some exercise and fresh air this will help protect them from becoming child victims online.

As a parent, I know the fight to ensure children's internet safety will not be an easy one, but making little tweaks here and there can lead to big results and help keep children safe online. Keep these tips in mind, and you'll be on your way.

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