How to Get Organic Google Traffic using Google Buzz

By: Raghu - No Comments

How to use Google Buzz to get Organic Google Search Traffic? Just follow the steps below.

Organic Traffic from Google Buzz

Combining Google’s 3 powerful features

  • Results from people in your social circle for “search phrase”
  • Cookies that remembers your search preferences
  • Google Buzz Network (Followers)

So, you have a blog and you want to drive more traffic to your blog.

  1. Building Buzz Followers Network
  2. Link Buzz status updates to blogs post updates through Twitter ( Blog to Twitter to Buzz).
  3. Post Buzz to as Public.
  4. Status updates will be will be indexed by Google.
  5. If your followers searches for similar phrase, it will be displayed in organic search results under “Results from people in your social circle”
  6. Results will be displayed in Twitter Real Time Search (very likely)

If you already have huge list of contacts, it’s easy to get followers, else start building your followers.

Send Tweets via Email Using TweetyMail

By: Raghu - No Comments

tweetymailAnil Chawla – friend of mine has created this cool Twitter App called TweetyMail, eMail to Twitter Posting App. It allows you to tweet straight from your email inbox, without switching to new window or Twitter App.

How it Works

To get started, click the “Sign in with Twitter” button below. After signing in, tweetymail simply needs to know your email address. You can then tweet and use Twitter by sending emails to tweetymail. You can also set up tweetymail to automatically forward tweets, mentions, and Twitter search results to your email.

Features

  • Very fast and easy to tweet from a mobile phone. You can attach pictures and include links, and it will automatically shorten URLs.
  • Automatically receive email alerts when someone mentions you on Twitter. You can create email alerts for other tweets and searches too.
  • Send and reply to direct messages on Twitter using email.
  • Follow/unfollow users by sending or forwarding emails.
  • Full support for all languages (as long as emails are sent using UTF-8 character encoding)
  • It’s really like a full-featured Twitter client that works through email.

So, what do you think of TweetyMail? Ready to give it a try?

Configure Gmail to Use Google Apps SMTP Server

By: Raghu - No Comments

Alright, you have multiple Gmail accounts and using Google Apps for your domain, then sending email your perosnal gmail account using Domain SMTP server just got easier. To send email from your Gmail account using Google Apps SMTP server, Google will provide 2 options

  1. Send using Gmail Server
  2. Send using your domain’s SMTP server.

Configure Domain SMTP Server

In order to send email using Google Apps SMTP server, first check the following settings

  1. Login into Google Apps and verify following option is Checked ( under Email Settings)
  2. Under Domain Settings > General > Enable SSL
  3. It can take upto 24 hours for changes to be updated.

Configure in Gmail

  • Login into your Gmail account > Settings > Accounts and Imports > Send Email from another address
  • Enter Name and Email Address
  • Send Verification.
  • After address is verified, configure the SMTP servers.
  • Select “Send through your-domain.com SMTP servers (recommended for professional domains”
  • SMTP Server : smtp.gmail.com
  • Port: 465
  • Check Use SSL
  • Enter User Name and Password
  • Click Save Changes

Thats it, you will be able to send email form your personal account through your domain’s SMTP server. So, “on Behalf of” tag will be removed from any email that is send form your personal id”.

If you select Send through Gmail (easier to set up) then On Behalf Of  tag will be added to all outgoing emails from your personal account.

9 Things To Do Before Ugrading WordPress

By: Raghu - No Comments

If you are planning to upgrade wordpress to latest release, do the following

  1. Read Worpdress Support forums to see any upgrade problems
  2. Backup Entire Database
  3. Check for Minimum Requirements ( MySQL, PHP)
  4. Check if all installed plugins supports the latest version of wordpress.
  5. Deactivate all the plugins
  6. Know how to revert to previous wordpress version, if upgrade were to fail.
  7. Test the upgrade in local wordpress installation ( if downtime of site might be major issue)
  8. Perform WordPress Upgrade
  9. Upgrade WordPress Database if required
  10. Check if Site is up and running.
  11. Click on few links to to check if URL structure is maintained.
  12. Activate the supported plugins one at a time.

WordPress 2.8.6 to 2.9 upgrade created couple of problems. It was because

  • Some of the plug-in’s didn’t support 2.9
  • db_version in Table WP_Options had incorrect value.

After I fixed the db_verison, site was up and running, but all the url was broken. It was due to unsupported some plug-in in 2.9

[Fixed] 2.8.6 to 2.9 Worpress Database Upgrade Required – Failed

By: Raghu - No Comments

Looks like 2.8.6 to 2.9 WordPress upgrade is is failing for many folks. Just after the upgrade the screen of death (blank screen) is displayed with just wordpress logo

This is what happened

  1. Upgraded WordPress from 2.8.6 to 2.9 from within wordpress
  2. Refreshed the wp-admin page
  3. Following screen was displayed

Database Upgrade Required

WordPress has been updated! Before we send you on your way, we have to upgrade your database to the newest version.

The upgrade process may take a little while, so please be patient.

Upgrade WordPress Database

When I click on the button, after few seconds empty  WordPress logo was diaplayed. Lookig at the url, there seems to be problem with url redirect. I can now not log into my domain b/c it brings me back to same Database Upgrade Required Page.

I searched online to see that many are having same issue. I came across the following solution that had the fix.Changing wp_db_verison to same value displayed in the databse for WordPress 2.9 fixed the problem.

Value in Database for 2.9 was 11548.

Next time I’m not going to do an automatic upgrade within few days of new wordpress release.

How to Get Triple Listing in Google Search Results

By: Raghu - No Comments

Having your site listed twice in Google Serch reults will definetly have higher click through rate compared to single listing.  What if you site has Triple Indented listing in Google ?

With competition heating up between Google and Bing search, Google is coming out with many search options. I guess, as part of that, google decided to go from Double Intended to Triple Indented listing in search results for a site.

Google Triple Indented listing

Google Triple Indented Listing

How to get Triple Indented Listing in Google

  • Site has to have atleast 3 pages optimized for the same keywords
  • If site has double listing, then create a new page ( unique contents) optimized for same keyword.
  • Create Reciprocal links with same keywords as anchor text from previous 2 pages.
  • Get back links (external and internal) to the new page.
  • Wait for Google to the page indexed and display in search results.

How to Increase Email Open Rate?

By: Raghu - No Comments

If you are into email marketing, testing is the key. There are various things to  tested to improve Email Open Rates. Link click through rates is completely different area.

  1. Send Email once a week ( on high traffic days)
  2. Send Email once number of articles reaches certain number  ( RSS to Email)
  3. Generic Email Subject ( What’s New, Free New Articles, 3 Free New Articles, …)
  4. Email for every new article ( Once per day)
  5. Email Subject to be Article  Title
  6. Use Readers name in Email Subject
  7. Include Call to Action Words ( Final Call, Open Now, One Day Sale Only, …)
  8. Use small caps instead of  Capital letters.
  9. Use Symbols to emphasis an idea ( [Download], (Click Now), …)
  10. Short email subject line ( sometimes lengty ones work too)

Take one idea, test it for a week and run through all possible combination’s. After you find the subject that works, work to improvise on that.

Example – If sending emails on Mondays mornings has higher open rates, then try other combination’s on Monday.

25% Increase in Average Time on Site

By: Raghu - No Comments

Average Time Spent by visitors on the site depends on type of sites  ( Blogs, Forums, Shopping Site, …). But, over period of time one can recognize the pattern establish a pattern and data will speak for itself.

In one of my blog, Average Time on site was around 3  Minutes, but I started testing Adsense  Link Units in various places and found a placement ( color and size) where visitors tend to click the links many times.

After testing the link unit  at new placements for 2 months, Average Time on Site decreased from 3 Minutes to 2 Minutes and 50 Seconds. It was interesting to see that  single Link Unit can lower the Average Time on Site by 30 seconds.

Last 5 days, after removing the link unit, Average Time on Site increased to 3 Minutes and 15 Seconds. That has impact on revenue, but increase of 45 seconds is huge.

For now,  45 seconds is much more valuable than revenue generated from the adsense link unit.

Next – I’m going to explore ow to maintain/increase Average Time on Site with link units ( or other ad units) present.

WordPress Password – Sorry, that key does not appear to be valid

By: Raghu - No Comments

If you run into Password Recovery Error with WordPress Sorry, that key does not appear to be valid, do the following

  • To correct this, fire up phpmyadmin ( it will be usually mysql.yoursite.com) in Cpanel,
  • click on the database name,
  • Select “wp_users” Table
  • Click on Brose Icon ( first icon)
  • Click on the Row to edit the password
  • Click on the pencil icon for editing the table, then do the following:
  • User pass > Function > MD5 and type in your new password
  • Click the “go” button and all should be fine.

This should fix the problem.

WordPress Database – Backup and Restore

By: Raghu - No Comments

List of WordPress Database related articles

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