5 Best Ways Bloggers Can Do Keyword Research

Your online Money Making business highly depends upon your understanding about two things in particular, first being the most productive domain to start with, and next to it is an effective Keyword research. Keywords are the most powerful ingredient of yourSearch Engine Optimization which drives traffic to your site from the search results. However, attracting a considerable traffic to your site/blog is directly related to your knowledge about the keywords utility. This means that you need to think from your potential visitor’s point of view that what he might be looking for. Effective keyword research does not only drive traffic, in fact beside increasing your followers, it helps boosting your overall site statistics, while on the other hand, generating huge revenue.

Things to Take Care of

As the competition is increasing in every domain, your potential readers/clients/ followers might not know about your existence even. This means that they might not be searching your company on the search engines, in fact, they would look for the services that the domain you own, provides. Now if you are smart enough to show your expertise on SEO, mind it that your readers are not going to anywhere else.

Before we go on with the most useful tips, you need to discover some most common keywords for your niche by answering the following questions.

1. Keywords to Describe Your Site?

2. What’s Unique about your product/services?

3. What makes you better than competitors in your domain?

Once the Idea is clear with sufficient relevant keywords in hand, Now all you need learn is how to do a unique keyword research for your articles to make them SEO friendly each time.

1. Use Google product search

The first name that clicks when you need to search anything is obviously ‘Google’, so why not to start with it? Click on Google Products and enter the major key phrase in the search box. For example, if you are writing an article on London Olympics (the most happening these days), Just like, we have been writing on our Sister Blog, and you will see a drop down with lots of relevant phrases that you can consider your keywords and use them in your post.

Not only this, but you can also click on a particular, most suited phrase to know more about it and find out what is pre-written and what is attracting more traffic. Visitors who come to your blog with the following keywords are determined to know all about you are sharing, decreasing the bounce rate.

2. Use Shopping.com

Just following the same procedure that we shared in tip #1, go to Shopping.com and search for the same topic London Olympics. You will see new phrases appearing in the search, giving you new ideas, first of all, and secondly providing you with a list of keywords that you can include in your post and enjoy targeted visitors who want to search everything about London Olympics.

3.Use Ebay.com

Ebay is yet another great platform when you are looking for worth adding keywords. Whether it’s a product or a service, Ebay is rich enough to hold a great variety on it. Repeat the similar activity that we did for the above two, and you will see all new keywords appearing.

4. Try Amazon.com

Amazed with how easy it is to collect keywords for your post? If not, then try Amazontoo. Although following the same procedure, the results are somehow much satisfactory. Enter your main keyword in the search box and you will see set of phrases, that can turn out be the most successful keywords of your post.

5. yahoo product search

Just like Google Product Search, Yahoo is playing it safe with its product search engine, though not that effective as Google, still trying to survive. You can expect some Good keywords with this method too. With the scrolling arrows, you can always explore more phrases to choose best suited keywords for your post.

Keyword research is a highly recommended tip to search about and use in your blogging career. Hope the following tips turn out to be useful enough to give you more relevant keywords for your articles.

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Customize Labels Cloud in Blogger

Back in the year 2008 when Blogger.com was moving through several update phases, third party developers would often take the golden opportunity of creating widgets for BlogSpot blogs but as soon as Google rolled out massive changes to their online services, several official widgets popped out which load fast and perform well because the scripts are served by Blogger servers. Page List and label cloud/list enabled designers to create dynamic menus. Since the stylesheet was made accessible. therefore we all got a chance to play with these widgets and transform them completely in look and appearance. We shared tutorials first time on how to create dynamic menus with page list and an automatic menu with label list and today we would share a simple stylesheet that will transform the labels cloud into organized small blocks that rotate on mouse over. I must ensure you that the styles are perfectly compatible in all major browsers including IE8+.

DEMO: Look at the label cloud on the sidebar of this blog

This is how labels look in cloud display:



This is how it will look after you apply the new style.

How it works?

Each label link is nested inside a span tag followed by a class named label-size. If the font-size is not specified the widget changes font-size of each label according to its post-count. Therefore showing big and small clouds. Introducing custom styles would over-ride the exiting styles thus changing the entire look. 

Turn Random Cloud display into Blocks

The code below can be customized in several ways to create exciting label designs. You can also add background images to them.
Follow these easy steps:

1. Go to Blogger > Settings> Layouts
2. Click add a gadget and choose Labels                     
3. Inside the settings make sure to choose the cloud display. You may set other options as per your requirement. See the screenshot below as example 

Please choose to display at most 25 labels. Too much labels on homepage look awkward. Showcase your best categories only.

• Read: What are blog labels or categories?

       4.    Now save the widget and go to settings > Template
       5.     Backup your template
       6.     Click Edit html > Proceed  and search for this

]]></b:skin>

        7.   Just above it paste the following CSS code:

/*-----Custom Labels Cloud widget by www.MyBloggerTricks.com----*/
.label-size{
margin:0 2px 6px 0;
padding: 3px;
text-transform: uppercase;
border: solid 1px #C6C6C6;
border-radius: 3px;
float:left;
text-decoration:none;
font-size:10px;
color:#666;
}

.label-size:hover {
border:1px solid #6BB5FF;
text-decoration: none;
-moz-transition: all 0.5s ease-out; 
-o-transition: all 0.5s ease-out; 
-webkit-transition: all 0.5s ease-out; 
-ms-transition: all 0.5s ease-out; 
transition: all 0.5s ease-out;
-moz-transform: rotate(7deg); 
-o-transform: rotate(7deg); 
-webkit-transform: rotate(7deg); 
-ms-transform: rotate(7deg); 
transform: rotate(7deg); 
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Matrix(
                    M11=0.9961946980917455, M12=-0.08715574274765817, M21=0.08715574274765817, M22=0.9961946980917455, sizingMethod='auto expand');
zoom: 1; 
}

.label-size a  {
text-transform: uppercase;
float:left;
text-decoration: none;
}
.label-size a:hover  {
text-decoration: none;
}

          8.  Save your template
         9.    All done!
Visit your blogs and see the labels completely transformed to small neatly crafted rectangular boxes. If in case you want the label boxes to be of random sizes depending on the post-count then simply delete font-size:10px; from the above code.

Need help?

I am sure the installation of this tweak wont trouble you a lot, if in case you needed help in changing the font colors on active, hover and visited modes then let me know. By default the visited link will turn black, unlinked and would also not rotate. Click any of your label links and see that page to check this effect.
I will be posting normal tutorials on plugins and widgets and I have got some new SEO tweaks for blogger blogs that would further improve your SERP ranking. Hope you like it guys

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Google PageRank

Well there comes just a new update on Google's Page popularity algo on2nd August 2012. The PageRank toolbar has started showing new ranks for all websites worldwide. The update this time seems a major one and there could be no further expectation of any new changes within the next 24 hours. The last update was on May 3rd and third last was on February 6th. The duration gap has now become constant. Google rolls out these updates quarterly, after every three months. The next update and last update of this year is expected anytime between November 1-10 2012. PageRank as you all know is a numerical weighting scale between 0-10. Websites that are recommended by related niches via backlinks rank higher on PR scale and get the benefit of faster crawl and index rate.  Blogs with higher PR are crawled faster compared to those with lower PageRank. For example a PR 7 webpage is crawled several times per minute compared to a PR 5 page that is crawled once every minute. The faster the robot crawls your pages the greater the chances for you to drive organic traffic from Google and build readership.

The PR for MBT remains at 4.0 and same is true for SEM which remains at 2.0. My main focus these last months have been Alexa Rank and I must congratulate all our readers for taking MBT to attain an Alexa Rank of 7K. MBT now counts amongst the very few Google blogs that has AlhamdulillAh crossed the 10K boundary. SEM has amazingly reached 29K within just 6 months and is improving daily. 

How important is PageRank?

PageRank is a successful link analysis algorithm that differentiates Google from its Market competitors. This algo is and was the backbone of Google's popularity when Larry Page and Sergey brin  first introduced this new giant search engine's functionality in September 1998. SEO professionals and internet marketers have now started measuring a website's popularity in terms of PageRank and Alexa Rank. PR is good to attract paid product reviews. Business owners do pay well if your blog has a stable PageRank, at least 3.0

But PageRank comes last in my priority list. Read further to find why.

Google Web Spam Head, Matt Cutts himself says that what is more important is your Content and not the PageRank. Watch this useful video:

Why your PageRank is not increasing?

Your PageRank did not increase? If yes then don't get frustrated and start understanding the concept first. PageRank is not sequential and surely not proportional to the number of incoming links. It is an automatic system that depends on quality links pointing your main domain. I have already written a detailed post that explains every single question revolving around your mind:

• Read: Three Reasons Why your PageRank is not increasing

Do you need several backlinks?

It's a myth that PR depends on getting hundreds of backlinks from niche websites. A single link from a high PR blog can change your rank from 0 to 4. Some guest authorshave already experienced this with us before. You must not waste your precious time commenting on forums and blogs just for the sake of low quality backlinks. Keep yourself limited to just 4-5 blogs that you may read and interact with. Build a relationship with your favorite authors and once you succeed in winning a respect in their eyes for yourselves, you can then start guest posting at these blogs without any hesitation.

Quick PR Formula:

• Guest post on at least 4 Blogs (where you comment) with PR > 3
• Make your Post of at least 1K words
• Make sure your blog is well designed, presented and contains at least 25 posts. You must provide a solid reason so that the author may offer a link.
• Produce a post that is related to the author's niche
• Make it presentable, sound mature and to the point
• Never try to promote yourself or your blog on a guest post, talk about the topic only.
• Add images and video to make the post stand out

No one would neglect such a great post. Try it.

Do not fool yourselves

Site rankings do count well but give your first priority to quality content only. Write more and publish more. Do not waste your online working hours in finding tweaks to somehow increase your PageRank. Instead do a lot of reading and Work on your SEO skills and build readership. There are many blogs online with PR 6.0 but they are not well versed with marketing strategies to use in order to market their blog and make a living out of it. Neither PR nor Alexa are as important as readership. I have always emphasized on the following priority list:

1. Readership First          (i.e. Posting quality content)
2. Traffic second              
3. Alexa third
4. PageRank Fourth

Advertisers look for a return value in your blogs, if you fail to offer that you fail to win a lucrative income. Internet Marketers look at your niche topic first and then they analyze your readership, fan followers and finally your site rankings.

• Read: How to find sponsors for your blog?

What is the Maximum PageRank achievable by a blog?

So far blogs that are managed by a single author or 2-6 authors could succeed in achieving a maximum of PR 6.0. I have not come across any blog with zero investment to have attained a number greater than six. Normally large businesses that have strong marketing backup rank high because the investment is huge. Blogs like search engine land, seomoz, mashable and techcrunch are corporate websites that have several hired authors who write tons of articles per week. Many people are involved behind its promotion and management and they are often backed by both print and electronic media.

So if you are a dedicated blogger then achieving 6 should be your goal. Remember Pagerank does not decide which blog is good and which is poor, its only an algorithm that tells whether a site is well recommended online or not. Reputation of any blog depends only in its strong reader base and quality updates.

What's your PageRank?

Do share with us your updated PR values and feel free to ask any SEO related question. I just hope this new update was a calm one for most of you. If you have seen a sudden positive jump then well done, if your Rank remains the same then thumbs up but if your PR has dropped then don't get demotivated and start working on the simple PR formula we shared above. Nothing works better then this technique so make yourself prepared for some quality guest posts and work with patience because you have a lot of time. i.e. 3 Months. The next update could occur anytime between 1-10 November 2012.  

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Why Submit Blog Posts to 10 of the Top Article Directories?

Writing for the web is great! Good writers are always in demand, because there are lots of websites that need to update and add fresh content for their own survival. Writing online can also get you some money. But more importantly, it builds your credibility and authority. Bloggers are no strangers to online content writing. So for them, it can be far more important and useful. Submitting your articles or blog posts to article directories can be a particularly good way of boosting your stats. It can bring many benefits for bloggers. Today, we'll take a look at the top 10 article directories where you can submit your articles or blog posts and benefit from them.

Why submit your articles?

Submitting articles has lots of benefits. First of all, you can get a backlink via your author box on that particular site. Most of these article directories have a 5+ PR. And if you know anything about blogging, you'll know how important a PR 5+ backlink is. A single high quality backlink is better than multiple low quality ones. It will help increase your own PageRank.

Besides PR, these submissions will also boost your traffic. These directories are frequently visited by millions of people in search of knowledge or articles to research upon. And with your articles, you can divert some of that traffic to your own website.

Another little benefit is, you can get rid of your old, or unnecessary blog posts. A lot of bloggers post on irrelevant stuff at the start just for the sake of something to write about. Many posts end up stalling as well, with no traffic coming to them. Such posts aren't any good to anybody. So deleting them, and submitting them on article directories instead can squeeze some use out of them.

Top 10 Article Directories

Here's a list of the top 10 article directories where you can submit old or new articles of yours and get some backlinks and traffic out of it.

1. The Free Library - PR 7
2. EzineArticles * - PR 6
3. ArticlesBase * - PR 6
4. GoArticles * - PR 5
5. Article Dashboard - PR 5
6. Article City - PR 5
7. Article Alley * - PR 4
8. Article Factory * - PR 4
9. WryteStuff * - PR 4
10. Internet Marketing News Watch - PR 3

You can submit one article to more than one directories above. However, the directories marked with a sterick (*) are listed under the SubmitYourAccount (SYA) Account Manager. This means, that articles submitted to these directories come under the same account manager. Hence, if you signed up for these directories with your SYA account, then you can not submit the same article to more than one of these websites. All the starred websites can be considered as a single article directory. You can, however, sign up without your SYA account, or with another account you might have. That way, you can submit your articles to more than one such directories.

You can sign up for any of these directories for free. It usually is an easy sign-up process. Once signed up, you are ready to start posting articles. Before you submit articles though, make sure your author profile is properly filled, and that it is linking to your website. Most sites give you an HTML box where you can directly add your link and anchor it to some text such as your name.

You can submit a single article to many directories. But keep in mind their copyrights law before submitting. Some directories won't let you post already published content, while others might not allow you to reproduce them. Be sure to check out their ToS before submitting anything.

We'd recommend you sign up for multiple article directories, at least 5. That way, you can be sure of scoring at least backlink to your website. And if more accept your article, well and good! The whole purpose of this exercise is to build quality backlinks, which should be on any blogger's priority list.

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Index Status: Advanced Index Reporting Feature for Webmaster Tools

Google is the largest search engine in the world today. And since it is the industry leader, it is only natural for it to set the standards. All bloggers and webmasters have only one concern in their minds regarding their sites when it comes to Google: whether Google isindexing their site or not? That is understandable, since most of their website traffic comes from Google. So to get un-indexed by Google is like having your legs chopped off - your blog won't be going anywhere, anytime soon. Well, to put some of the concerns regarding indexing at bay, Google has introduced a new Index Status feature in the Google Webmaster Tools. This feature will let webmasters know how many pages of theirs' have been indexed, crawled, and more!

Where can you find this information?

To check out this feature, log into your Google Webmaster Tools account. On the home page, click on the site for which you want to see the index report. Now click on theHealth option on the left side of your dashboard, and select Index Status from the available options. Now, you will see two tabs, Basic and Advanced.

The Basic tab

The basic tab shows a graph which tells you how many pages of your site have been indexed over time.  It shows up to one year of data. And then legend will tell you how many pages are currently being indexed. Google says this information is accurate, and does not include non-canonical URLs. So if there are more than one URLs pointing to the same content, or if there's duplicate content present, then it will be counted just one page instead of multiple pages.

Google also admits that this data lags by around a week. So this isn't a real-time reporting. Rather, it is better suited for monitoring trends. If the graph  has been steadily going up, then there's nothing to worry about. It means that your new content is being recognized by Google, and is being indexed. If the graph remains stationary, or falls down despite your addition of new content, then you might want to look into the Advanced tab.

Advanced

The Advanced tab gives more insights into how Google has been treating your website. In addition to the Total Indexed graph, you can also see the Ever Crawled, Not Selected, and Blocked By Robots graphs.

• Ever Crawled - The total number of pages Google has ever come across on your site. This will show you your maximum total number of pages. So if you had 100 pages which Google crawled, and then you deleted half of them, this will still display a count of 100.
• Blocked By Robots - Number of pages blocked by robots.txt. Google knows about these pages, but wouldn't index them unless you change your robots.txt file
• Not Selected - Total number of pages that Google hasn't seen fit to be included in its search results. This could happen due to a variety of reasons
• It has a redirection to another page
• It has duplicate content also found on another page, and hence the other page was indexed instead
• It has a rel="canonical" tag to other pages.

How this data is useful?

This data could be really useful for debugging purposes to see what's wrong with your website and why you aren't getting traffic. An increase in the number of Total Indexed and Ever Crawled pages of course means that you site is on the right track, and that Google can easily access your content.

However, if there is a sudden drop, then it means Google is having trouble reaching your website. It could be because your web server is down, or that, you added a sitewide "noindex" tag rather than adding it on just one page.

A large number of Not Indexed means there are problems with canonicalization, or there's a lot of duplicate content on your website. You should make efforts to reduce the amount of duplicate content and non-canonical URLs on your website.

The Google Webmaster Tools is your friend. It will notify you of any errors on your site, so you can easily correct them. It is helpful features like this that make Google the best search engine on the planet!

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Facebook Printable Posters Now Available For Download

Facebook is a very powerful social media, not just for networking, but also for marketing. For the success of any business, its presence on social media, especially on Facebook is a must. |This is because according to an estimate, around 75% of the customers (for any product or service) use online streams such as social media to learn more about that particular product before going for it. And since Facebook is the largest social media with more than 900 million users, you can see how much a company would be missing out on if it didn't have a Facebook page. Facebook isn't just for online businesses either. Much like Google Places, local businesses can also utilize Facebook for promotion and to bring in customers. And for such local businesses, there's a good news! Facebook Printable Posters are now available for them to download and use for their business' promotion!

The Facebook Marketing Team has recently released Printable Posters which you can now download, customize, and put up on your stores as posters or on your website as banners and drive audience and customers to your business!

Download Facebook Printable Posters

These posters come print-ready. You can simply customize them to display your Facebook Page URL, such as facebook.com/MyBloggerTricks, just like we have done with the intro image. Once you've changed the URLs, you can download them and send to your printer. Click on the link below for the PDF file.

• Click to Download Facebook Printable Posters

What's the use?

The most obvious use for these posters is advertising and promotion. Small local businesses, such as shops, restaurants, fast food junctions, real estate consultancy, or any other such business can download these posters and send them out for printing. These posters are print ready, and Facebook has even inverted them for printing ease. All they need to do is, edit their Page URL before printing. These posters can be displayed on billboards or front windows, encouraging customers to like the Facebook page for that business, or check in while they are inside the shop/restaurant etc. The only condition, of course, is that, businesses need to have a Facebook page. Otherwise, what use are they, if customers can't 'Like' anything?

These posters can also be used by website owners to divert traffic to their Facebook page. They can link the banners to their Facebook page, and encourage people to follow them and like the page. This way, online businesses can easily retain their customers, and send out updates for their benefit.

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Facebook Introduces New Marketing Features For Brand Pages

Facebook Pages are a great way to promote a brand, and pull traffic to a website. They offer many marketing features, such as targeting a specific audience, learning about insights and analytics, promoting your content, and more. Well now, Facebook has announced in a blog post, that it has introduced some new features to further assist marketers to better promote their content and draw more traffic. These new features include scheduling posts, unpublished page posts, and updated page admin permissions for third-party apps. These new features come as Facebook continues its stream of changes after a survey, that rated Facebook disappointingly low in terms of customer satisfaction.

Facebook got a low customer satisfaction rating due to its controversial updates such as the Ticker, the Timeline, and the every-increasing security concerns. Hence, these new features could be a bid to curb the losses incurred by Facebook as marketers reduced their activity. Now, Facebook is back with new options for such marketers. Options not currently available for Google Plus Pages.

Scheduling posts

Alas, this is a feature much awaited for by page admins. Facebook had no scheduling option for posts before, so admins either had to make do manually, or use a a third party app such as HootSuite. While those apps are perfectly fine, it's nice to have an in-build option on Facebook.

Page admins can now schedule their posts anywhere between 10 minutes to six months from the time of adding a post. They can also reschedule the post if it is more than 3 minutes from its scheduling time. This is a great and easy feature for page admins, who don't have to use any third party apps. Scheduling your posts will bring consistency to your page. In fact, it is a whole marketing strategy, scheduling posts at an optimum time so that maximum of your followers can see them.

Unpublished Posts

Here is another great new feature designed especially for targeted marketing. It is for page admins who sometimes want to send sponsored updates. These posts aren't really published, and don't show up on your timeline. Instead, they are sent to your followers based on their demographics that you choose. For example, you can send out posts only to men, or only to women etc. You can use this feature to run segmented marketing campaigns.

Admin Permissions

This is another great release aimed at restricting permissions to other admins and third party apps. Previously, there were fixed privileges for admins, which means if you needed an app to access your page to manage it, you had to grant it full permissions. But now, you can limit what permissions you give out. For example, a post scheduling app doesn't need to access your insights, not vice versa. Hence, you can restrict permissions to ensure more security.

These new changes look promising. But whether Facebook will be able to redeem its rating in user satisfaction or not, only time will tell. Hope you liked this post. If you run pages on Facebook, then do go ahead and try them out. And share this piece of news with others too :)

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Create A Branded Username For Google Plus URL

Google Plus is a very popular social media, and is especially useful for bloggers and webmasters, who not only have to catch traffic from the social media itself, but also adopt it so easily use and integrate with other Google services, such asBlogger, Google AdSense, Google Webmaster Tools, and so on. Google Plus is great in many respects. But it has one very obvious flaw, something which even newcomers to the network notice as well. Google Plus does not have personalized usernames in profile URLs. For example, for profiles or pages, you can't have a URL like plus.google.com/name, as you can on Facebook and Twitter. What you have instead is plus.google.com/1234567890 etc. There is a workaround for this, and you can create a brand username for your Google Plus Page or Profile URL!

Google Plus Profiles currently contain a long string on numbers, which are not easy to memorize. And so, unlike Facebook or Twitter, if someone asks you for your Google Plus profile link, you can't easily direct them verbally. You first have to open up your Google Plus profile, copy its URL, and then send it to someone via chat or email. This is very time- and effort-consuming. And if you're away and you need to give someone your profile link verbally or via message, the best you can do is tell them to look you up, hope there aren't very many people with the same name as yours, and trust that they'll find you.

All this involves much hassle. But you can get rid of it simply by using a great web app called GPlus!

What is GPlus?

GPlus is basically a URL shortening service for Google Plus. With it, you can get a personalized username for your profile in the form gplus.to/username. Note that this is a URL shortening service, which means it won't change your actual username on Google Plus. It will just provide you a redirect link, so when you enter gplus.to/username in your address bar, it won't directly open your profile. Rather, it will redirect you to your Google Plus profile.

Customizing Google Plus Profile URLs

1. You need to fetch your Google Plus Profile ID first. Log into your Google Plus account, and click on the down arrow next to your profile image in the top-right region of your screen. Now click on View Profile. Now, you can see the ID in your address bar. (See the image below. The highlighted numbers make up the ID). Select your ID and copy it.

2. Take this ID, and go to GPlus. In the Nickname, type in the username you want to use. Now paste your ID in the ID field, and click on Add. Be sure to type in only your ID numbers, and not any slashes (/) or any other part of your profile URL. Usernames can only be between 3-25 characters.

Once you click on Add, GPlus will show you whether all is okay or not. And that's it! Now you can type gplus.to/username into your address bar, and you will arrive at your own Google Plus profile!

Customizing Google Plus Page URLs

The process for customizing page URL is the same as for profiles. But there's a slight difference. Google Plus Page URLs are somewhat different than profiles.

Notice how page URLs are slightly different than profile URLs. But you just have to go for the string of numbers between the slashes.

Claim your username now!

This is a really great service which has been started recently. And already, millions of profiles and pages have been added to it. Claim your own username now before someone else scoops it up!

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Google Plus Overtakes Facebook In Customer Satisfaction

Facebook might now be facing a grim reality after a latest survey by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), which revealed that Facebook users are not satisfied with the happenings at the social network lately. More worrisome for Facebook is the fact that while its customer satisfaction is plummeting downwards, its rival network,Google Plus, is catching up fast! Not only that, other social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn have overtaken it as well with respect to customer satisfaction. To make matters worse, Facebook hasn't made much of a mark ever since its IPO and its first quarterly earnings as a public company. So what does this mean? Has Google Plus finally found the opening it has been looking for, or has Facebook yet to see the worst?

Survey performances

The ACSI conducts this survey annually, taking into account more than 230 companies across multiple sectors. It accesses how happy a company's customers or users are, and then rates the company accordingly, on a scale of 100. This year, Facebook scored a 61, a record low for the company, and a 7.6% decrease from last year's 66. Before that, Facebook scored 64 in 2010. Hence, this 61 comes as a shock, especially since it is the lowest among all of Facebook's major competitors.

Google+, on the other hand, starred in the survey. This was was a debut for Google+, and it rose to the occasion and scored a whopping 78, the top score which it shares with Wikipedia. Wikipedia has been topping the survey for the last three consecutive years. Now, it shares the lead with Google Plus. The major reasons for Google Plus's strong position is the absence of ads, and integration with other Google services, where it acts as a social glue holding everything together to provide a seamless experience to the users.

Pinterest, Twitter, and LinkedIn were also included the first time ever this year in the survey. And surprisingly, all three fared better than Facebook. They scored 69, 64, and 63 respectively. Hence, Facebook might need to seriously reconsider its tactics. Myspace was not included for a second year in a row.

Why Facebook spiraled downwards?

Facebook might have mis-calculated things when it was introducing new features such as the Timeline. While users had the option to go or not go for the Timeline layout, Facebook pages weren't as lucky. And the layout was enforced on them. This caused a lot of discontent. The Timeline might look great to some people, most others aren't in favor of a dramatic change.

The survey also found out that users have security concerns. They don't entirely trust Facebook, what with all the widespread spam and scam. They are conscious about their privacy as well. The ticker feature saw to that. Now, people can see everything their friends are doing in the Ticker. There are other such features as well that make people rethink about sharing their personal information. Users also don't like the ruthless, "in-the-face" advertising on Facebook.

What this means for Social Networks

Facebook might be the biggest social network of all with over 900 million users, but its rivals are no newbies either. This could very well be their chance to gain the ground lost by Facebook. Such a low rating has hurt Facebook's reputation. Donna Tam at CNET says, "It's got to hurt Mark Zuckerberg's ego to see another low rating, considering the company's mantra is about making users happy over advertisers."

If there's one thing Facebook needs to learn, it's that keeping users happy is the key, and not adding more services. Only satisfied users will use those services. Pleasing over 900 million people isn't easy. And such a large number could be the reason why Facebook got such a low rating. Compare this with Google Plus's 250 million, and Twitter's 500 million. The more people there are, the more critics. But nevertheless, customer satisfaction should be every company's number one priority.

As for Google plus it has to cover a lot of ground. But it has a lot more potential, what with all the integration with other Google services. And if this trend of keeping customers satisfied remains, then we could be looking at the next leader in Social Media in the near future.

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Watch Live Tarawih Prayer Stream From Makkah In This Ramadan Kareem

In this holy and blessed month of Ramadan, Google presents a gift to more than a billion Muslims all around the world by launching a YouTube channel where you can watch and listen to live Tarawih prayers, and see special programs related to Ramadan Kareem. The prayers and other programs are broadcasted live through YouTube, with good audio and video streaming quality. This is indeed a great gift to those who haven't been there, or want to listen to the Imam-e-Kaba recite the Holy Quran during Tarawih Prayers. The Channel was made live on 20th June. During the time when there are no on-going prayers, the channel shows other streams from Masjid-al-Haram and The Kaaba.

The Tarawih prayers are a part of Ramadan (though not obligatory for everyone). They are offered along with the usual Isha prayers (night-time prayers). They are longer than usual prayers, and it is customary for the prayer leaders to complete the Holy Quran at least once in Tarawih prayers throughout the month of Ramadan. Hence, the people offering Tarawih prayers can benefit simply by listening to The Quran. And what better way to listen to the Quran other than in the beautiful voices of Imam-e-Kaaba and Haram?

To view the live Tarawih prayers, you can catch the channel live here, or click on the video below.

Besides this live prayer stream, Google has also set up a channel for people to see live television programs from over 50 channels during the month of Ramadan. Ramadan isn't just about praying. It is about peace as well, and entertainment while learning something useful. These programs are aimed at educating people and teaching them a lesson through the use of dramas and other such programs.

That is not all! Google has also organized 30 Hangouts for the 30 days of Ramadan. Since specially made Iftaar meals are traditional in Ramadan, these Hangouts will feature the best chefs sharing their recipes. Moreover, it will have doctors giving out advice about balanced diets, especially in Ramadan. Other than that, there will be literary and religious discussions as well, through which you can learn a lot!

If you are interested, you can follow the Google Arabia page on Google+, and find out about schedules, agendas, and other such updates. This is a really great venture, and we thank Google for it. Muslims all around the world can take full its full advantage, and learn a lot of things while being entertained! Hope you like this post, and will check these services out. Also spread the word so that other fellows can learn about it too! And if you have any questions regarding what we discussed in this post and previous posts about Ramadan, then feel free to ask. Peace and blessings people :)

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Yup! just a new step. We are releasing today the official business cards of STC NETWORKand declaring blogging as a lifetime profession. STC network now has two employees and successfully operating two blogs under its slogan. The number of co-authors and developers working for us would increase after Ramadan Kareem. We are now managing and working for several blogs and E-commerce websites as part of our premium services and developing both Blogger, PSD, HTML and Wordpress themes. We have added PHP development projects to our list just this year and we would also be offering SMO services very soon. MBT would continue publishing free plugins and tutorials as always and would serve blogosphere with the same zeal.

Buddies I never thought this small home hobby would turn out to be the business I dreamt off. Never even imagined few years back that my little living room where I sit and help thousands of people online daily would turn out to be the little Office I had to take care all my life. Can't thank enough the Supreme Cherisher Allah (SW) and especially all of you for the consistent love, respect and priceless feedback. The credit behind all that we achieved so far goes to you because you all remained a great learning institute some way or the other. I will remain thankful to you till time ends. :)

About the cards

The cards are printed at both sides and matt laminated, approximately the size of a debit card. Its designed by keeping MBT's parent design in mind, utilizing the same blue and black color combination. The idea behind its composition and design took me around a month because its often difficult to choose a flavor for yourself than for others. The front of the card contains details about the network administration, co-authors and some contact details whilst the back contains a quote I often use i.e. "I blog for living"

Note: The cell number given in the cards has been chopped off for privacy reasons.

Front:

Back:


Cards for our co-authors:
All the hard work that these two fellows have been doing in my absence or presence is worth more than what I did for them. To show an appreciation around 500 cards are color printed for both Qasim and Nida in order to help them better promote themselves in online industry.

How important are business cards for a Blogger?

Blogging is still a growing phenomena amongst people you meet in day to day life. Even those who are running blogs as hobby belittle its significance and look at it as a earning resource from advertisements. Earning through blogging is beyond advertisements. Blogging in short is the showcase of all your portfolio that attracts direct sponsors and customers. Advertisements cost for only 30% of all our monthly income whilst services and affiliate sales count for 70%.  It is often difficult  to explain to people you meet in daily life on how you earn a living out of a blog. Verbally dictating your domain address is yet another headache. It looks weird when people ask you "Sorry I forgot your blog address, what was it?" "How can I contact you?" "Do you have a visiting card?" "What's a blog?" "What do you do for living?" Thus instead of standing and answering all these questions verbally, handing your tiny business card saves both time and honor. Its indeed a great marketing strategy to advertise yourself at home amongst targeted customers around you. I really felt the need for an identity and therefore these cards become a necessity.

Business cards amongst bloggers is not very common because such web owners are mostly known online and they keep themselves visible within the parameters of their webpage screen resolution, but we took this step just to promote the trend of business cards amongst small business owners especially blog publishers.

If you have resources and you think your blog has reached a stage where it could attract local clients and market your local identity then I would strongly recommend that your order the prints outs right today.

Your views

If there is anything that gives me more pleasure then it's your honest feedback filled with love and respect and frankly gesture. I love reading all your comments and it hurts when I am not able to reply on time. This is my third year with you all. Shared almost everything with you, whether it may be a family tragedy, yearly achievements or a new business launch, I love sharing it with you all.  Thank you for motivating me to do better each day and each second.  Would love your suggestions on how can we improve this little community together and would appreciate your kind comments on this latest news. Take good care of yourselves always. Peace and blessings buddies. :)

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