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Blogging 4:12 PM

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5 Must Know Image Optimization Tips

Blogging 4:38 PM

As the world moves farther down the mobile path, the advantages of including images within search results are clear: image results are more easily seen, understood and clickable than traditional organic listings.

According to columnist Clay Cazier, here are some image optimization tips to help improve image visibility within search results:

Photo Source: https://static.pexels.com/photos/6415/apple-desk-office-working.jpg

Top Factors:
1. Image should have a relevant two- to four-word filename.
2. Image should use a descriptive two- to four-word ALT tag.
3. It should have a relevant heading, caption or surrounding text.
4. Use clear images, placed high up on the page, that specify width and height attributes.
5. Create and submit an image sitemap.

Pretty easy, isn't it? But let's take a look in a more detailed description.

1. Filenames
Giving an image a detailed filename is key. For example, Google says “my-new-black-kitten.jpg is a lot more informative than IMG00023.JPG.” Use numbers if you have multiple images with the same object type (e.g., my-new-black-kitten-2.jpg).

Some other notes about image filenames:

JPEGs seem to appear most in Google Image search results, but this is an anecdotal notation, not statistical. JPEG, GIF and PNG should be your go-to filetypes, but GIF and PNG in particular may be advantageous because of load time considerations. BMP, WebP and SVG are okay.
Hyphens work the best as delimiters, not underscores or spaces.
Rule of thumb: Four words per image name maximum.

2. ALT Text
ALT text should always accurately and succinctly describe the image. You must satisfy search engines with enough keywords to accurately describe your image in detail, but avoid keyword stuffing. Three to four words at most.

3. Surrounding Header, Captions And/Or Content
According to Google’s Image Publishing Guidelines, “It’s a good idea to make sure that images are placed near the relevant text. In addition, we recommend providing good, descriptive titles and captions for your images.”

For Microsoft, “Text that is closer to an image on a web page may be more relevant to what the picture is about than text that is further away.” According to the SEO by the Sea blog, here are some distance elements to consider:

The number of intervening words between the text and the image.

The number of intervening full stops such as “.” “?” “!” and other sentence-ending punctuation/symbols between the text and the image.

The number of intervening table data tags (<td>) between the text and the image.

The number of intervening table rows tags (<tr>) between the text and the image.

4. Great User Experience
Users are what matter to Google, so images that reflect what users want have the best chance of being visible. Just like content, this means the best approach is to have images that are high-quality and easy to engage with. Consider the following guidelines:

Use crisp, clear photos.

If several of the same images appear on your site, consider creating a standalone landing page for each image. “If you do this, be sure to provide unique information — such as descriptive titles and captions — on each page. You could also enable comments, discussions, or ratings for each picture.” — Google Image Publishing Guidelines

Images should be high up on the screen, since some users do not scroll.

Structure directories so that similar images can be saved together.

Specify height and width for each image to speed up page load time.

5. Image Sitemaps
Publish an image sitemap; it is an effective way to help Google discover your images. Ensure that your image sitemaps validate through the Google Search Console account associated with the domain. For further optimization, use the optional caption, geo_location and title tags on your image sitemap.

Do you have other image optimization tips in mind?

Share it with us and comment below! Don't forget to give it a Google +1 if you find this post helpful. :)

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How To Spot A Fake Website

Blogging 9:23 PM

The Internet can be a great way to find products and services that may not be readily available in your local area, however it is important for you to be able to tell by navigating around on a website whether or not it is legitimate. According to www.wikihow.com, here are some steps to learn about the signs and ways to determine if a specific website is real and legitimate:

Photo courtesy of Winda (https://www.instagram.com/windareksa/)

1. Call, write, or email the website using the contact information provided on their website to check for legitimacy.

If you reach an automated voice messaging system, find that the number is not in service, or nobody answers during regular business hours, the website may not be legitimate.

2. Check out the address bar – is the site verified by google? Most large, safe sites will be verified, and the address bar will display either a location or a safety ranking.

3. Look at the Google SafeBrowse report. Simply type in “http://google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=” before the site address in the address bar; Google will give out a report about this specific site.

For example:

http://google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=youtube.com

4. Visit https://www.whois.net website to validate and assess the company's information.

Type the company's website or domain into the "Lookup" box provided on the Whois website and click on the "Go" button. Scroll down the Whois Lookup results page to verify if the information provided matches up with the information on the company's website; such as their country, official contact information, the amount of time they have owned the website or that verifies the website is associated with that program or award.

5. Read through the website's terms and conditions before doing business with them to check for understanding and to verify the terms and conditions make sense.

6. Verify that the website's checkout or payment page is Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) secured to protect your credit card number and other personal information you enter.

SSL secured pages will begin with "https" instead of "http" at the beginning of the web address.

7. Type the company's name into a major search engine to see if they appear in search results and to see if they are mentioned anywhere else on the Internet.

You may also want to search for the business on consumer review websites such as the Better Business Bureau to seek customer feedback and reviews.

Please note that these are just few of the simple steps on how to determine if a specific website is real, safe, and legitimate. There are some websites that are not verified by Google and starts with "http" but has good reviews. Like http://www.zalora.com.ph/ and http://www.lazada.com/. Let's just always remember to search first about a specific site for reviews and/or feedbacks before giving your personal information.

I hope you learned something from here. If you find this post helpful, feel free to share it and give it a Google +1 below! :)

Remember to Dream, Sparkle, and Shine!

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Wanted: Guest Bloggers!

Authors' Update 1:01 PM

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Blog Achievements 2015

Authors' Update 6:53 PM

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8 Benefits of Guest Blogging

Blogging 3:29 PM

Guest Blogging is writing a blog post to be published on another blog as a temporary featured author. It is a tool that can enhance the author’s reputation and exposure. When you start a new blog, your content might have trouble reaching a wide audience, even if it is top-notch. By offering some posts up for other sites to publish, you can reach more people who can carry over to your site and become subscribers. Let's take a deeper look at the 8 Benefits of Guest Blogging:

1. More traffic to your website.
The biggest benefit associated with guest blogging is the ability to gain a quality backlink. When writing a guest post you will want to include 1 or 2 links in the bio of the article back to your website. These links are the reward for providing high quality content.

2. Meet other Bloggers.
Guest posting not only increases your website traffic but also allows you to connect with other bloggers in your market. This allows future guest posting opportunities, ability to share strageties and allow for feedback on your overall strategy.

3. Improve your writing skills.
Guest blogging also improves your writing. The more content you write, the better the writing skills and so you will be able to write and post more on other blogs.

4. Increase exposure and brand awareness.
Let's say you wrote a guest post on a blog with 20,000 visitors daily and your guest post was viewed 5,000 times. Even though you might not get more than 300 visitors to your blog from that guest post, the truth is your name has just been exposed to 5,000 more people! Yay!

5. Guest posting is great for search engines.
Write a compelling author bio and place a URL link back to your site.

6. Get to know new communities.
Guest posting helps you meet new and interesting groups of people. It allows you to get in into already-established groups (communities), and share your experience.

7. Get more E-mail subscribers.
Because a large portion of the traffic derived from your guest posts is highly targeted, you'll see an instant increase in the number of people who opt in to what you're offering.

8. Generate targeted traffic.
By guest posting on popular blogs in your niche, you'll start seeing a portion of their traffic flow into your blog. Because the authority's blog on which you guest post and your own blog are in a similar niche, visitors will probably be interested in the topics of your content, and some of that traffic will stick on your blog.

Always remember to write a Guest Post ONLY if you have something worth saying — never abuse it!

How about you? Have your tried Guest Blogging? How's your experience? Leave a comment below and share it!

By the way, I'm accepting guest posts! Let's talk about it. Contact me here.

[The photo is not mine, I just edited it. / Source]

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Awesome Links: Blogging and Social Media

5 Must Know Image Optimization Tips

How To Spot A Fake Website

Wanted: Guest Bloggers!

Blog Achievements 2015

8 Benefits of Guest Blogging

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