Blogging tips

How To Tell If a Comment is Spam

Sometimes a comment shows up and you have a hard time figuring out if it is spam or not. Well, if you are in that situation there is ways to tell.

1. The first way is to see the ip address of the commenter. If you’re blogging platform doesn’t show the ip address then you can go on to the next method. If it does, then copy and paste the ip address and see if it is in the spammer ip directory. The one that I recommend is: Spam Cop. Once you get to the page just paste the ip address into the search box.

2. The second way is to see if they have keywords for their name. If they do then it is most likely spam.

There are tons of spam comments on the internet that have gotten posted onto blogs because they were mistaken as legitimate. If you don’t check every comment even if it looks legitimate, then your blog might get penalized by Google for having the spam links on your blog.

How I Overcame Bloggers Block

I didn’t have any ideas for posts. I hadn’t even posted for 2 and a half months. I was starting to feel hopeless. But, one thing saved me from giving up. You want to know what I did? I asked my target audience what they wanted to learn about. That let me come up with a lot of ideas.

So you can use this with your blog. This is definitely a good thing to do for you and your readers. So, the next time you are out of ideas, ask your target audience.

Other ways to get ideas are:

Look at blog comments – You can do this by going to a popular blog that is in the same niche as you, and look at the comments they have on their blog. So, how does this help? Sometimes the comment includes a question. You just write down the question, and answer it in your next blog post.

Look at Google related searches – To do this, just go to Google And type in what subject you are trying to write a blog post about. Push search and then go to the sidebar on the left and push, Show more search tools. After that, select related searches

Use Google AdWords keyword tool – This tool can help you find more ideas than you would get from the related searches. To get started, just go to the Google AdWords keyword tool page, and then follow the instructions.

If you do these, you will never run out of post ideas. But, remember every once in a while, bloggers block will happen. Remember, don’t get too stressed, ideas will come to you some time.

Tell us how you overcame bloggers block in the comments.

How To Submit Your Sitemap To Google

Sitemaps can help Google with discovering all the pages of your website. To submit it to Google, follow these steps.

First, you must have a Google Webmaster Tools account. If you have one then you can skip this step and go on to the next one.

Second, go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools. This will take you to the Webmaster Tools dashboard.

Third, select your website from the list. You will see a page that shows keywords, links, and other data. Under keywords, you will see Sitemaps. Then click on Submit a Sitemap.

How To Prevent Comment Spam

Spam is a growing problem that most blogs deal with. Fortunately you can prevent comment spam by using these methods.

Reviewing comments- With most blogging platforms you can set for comments to be moderated before they are published. This will stop all comment spam from reaching your blog.

Filtering comments- This is where you can set for the comment to be reviewed or not published if it has a certain word or element in it that you don’t want in the comments.

To be most effective you should combine these two methods for your blog comments.

2 Ways To Find Copies of Your Content on The Web

You probably do everything to prevent content theft, but you probably haven’t planned for when it actually happens. If you are wondering if your content has been copied, you can use these 2 methods.

Using Copyscape– This website can help you find and prevent theft of your content. You can pay for premium tools or you can use their free tools. To use Copyscape, go to their website, and type the url of the content you want to check for copies of.

Using search engines- Another way is to use search engines. To do this, just copy and paste a part of your article in the search box. The reason I would not copy the whole article is because, some content thieves make minor changes to the article to make it harder to find.

This will help you to deal with content theft. You should also report the website that copied the content to Google.

Things That You Should Avoid on Your Site

1.Animated ads. For example, ones that fly around your screen.

2. Pop ups. The reason why you should not have pop ups is that if people are using a mobile device then your site will not display properly, or it will not show at all.

3. Blinking text.

4. A hard to see background on hard to see text. For example, yellow on pink background.

5. Hidden text.

6. Excessive use of images. ( Too much can use up a lot of bandwidth and can increase the page load time.)

7. Don’t present your important content using multimedia.

8. Avoid making multimedia elements play automatically.

Tell us what things you avoid on your site in the comments.

How To Keep Your Website Google Friendly

When creating or maintaining your website, you have to keep in mind the website where most of your traffic is going to come from. That site is Google. That said, you should spend some time making sure that your site is accessible to Google and has authority over other sites. To keep your website relevant and have your website be Google friendly, you have to follow some guide lines.

The major guidelines for webmasters are:

• Create unique and relevant content. (That includes not taking content from other sites).
• Don’t try to fool Google into giving you a good ranking. (Some include doorway pages, false keywords, keyword stuffing, or link schemes).
• Write for your visitors not for web crawlers.
• Keep your code clean.
• Each page on your website must be linked to by at least one static text link.
• Make sure your site is compatible with all the major browsers.
• Don’t use cloaking. (Cloaking is when you show different content to search engines and the real content to users. For more information about it go. )

Check Hyperlinks

When you are maintaining your website, it is important that you check all of the links on your site to make sure they work. This should be a weekly task, and it is very important for keeping your website professional and making sure your visitors find the information they are looking for. If you do not have the time to check all of the links manually, there are free tools that can do it for you. These tools are available on many websites, so I will just mention a few here.

1. W3 Validator

2. IWebTool Broken link checker

3. Website Goodies link checker

Don’t Copy From Other Webpages Even If You Give Them Credit

I suggest that when you go on another website and find that their information is really useful, then you should not copy their content. Even if you give the website credit for their work and maybe include a link back to their website, you still should not copy it. Well, why? Because GoogleBotis careful about sites with the same content. GoogleBot will think that you are trying to steal other peoples content in order to get a better search results ranking. It could really hurt your search engine ranking, and maybe even block your site. My advice is to not copy other peoples content.

Avoid Bad Links Pointing To Your Website

When you try to promote your website aggressively, Google may see your site as spam. That’s why you have to be careful not to get caught in a link scam. These scams often put your link in link farms and on websites that have a really bad ranking (spam websites). When Google sees that, they think that your trying to trick the search engine into giving you a high ranking.

Great Ways To Keep People Coming Back To Your Site

1. Provide a tip of the day.
2. Host contests, sweepstakes, or giveaways.
3. Host polls on your site.
4. Have a free advertising week.
5. Host a link exchange.