There are many services being offered that advertise that they are able to spot plagiarism, and some of them are even free. However, I would like to present you with a very simple method. First of all, the word.plagiarist is derived from the latin word ‘kidnapper’, and it basically means that a person takes credit for someone else’s work. If you do not want anyone else to take credit for your work, you can use the Google Search engine in order to find if any of your articles are on other people’s websites. To do this select some parts of your articles and copy/paste them to Google. Look carefully at the search results to see what websites are listed there. Remember do not make accusations before you make sure that someone indeed copied your articles.
Of course, searching for plagiarism using a search engine might take a lot of time. Nonetheless, it is an excellent solution for those who do not wish to pay for similar services. Those who do not wish to pay may also consider using Copyscape, as it allows a limited number of searches per day for free. Whatever you choose, make sure that no one is copying your content without permission.
Blog, Web
Until very recently bloggers were relatively unknown and they did not have such a big influence. Times have changed though, and there are hundreds of thousands of active blogs and bloggers. There are some bloggers that are very well known and respected. Many of them can compete with major newspapers, and have thousands of subscribers. That is because blogs besides giving out valuable information can also achieve one other thing that newspapers cannot – provide a sense of belonging to a community.
Most bloggers are writing their own articles and quoting only small amount of text in their posts. On the other hand, some bloggers are posting large chunks of articles from newspapers. This in turn has encouraged subscriber newspapers to form The AP, which uses the Attributor to detect copied content from newspapers. If you write your own articles you do not have anything to worry about; however, if you are copying large amount of text from popular newspapers you may get caught. Writing your own articles is very rewarding, so I encourage you not to copy text from anywhere else, unless you want to quote some short paragraphs for various reasons. After all, we want bloggers to have good reputation and to be respected.
Blog, Web
It seems that some websites are blocking search engines from spidering some parts of their sites. This includes website like Craiglist and Del.icio.us.
Last year, for example, many SEO websites were reporting that Yahoo has blocked other search engines from accessing certain links on Del.icio.us. What did it mean to an average Internet user? I do not think it really had such an impact, although it might have been a problem for webmasters who were receiving many backlinks from Del.icio.us in hopes to improve their site rankings. Those of us who had many incoming links from Del.icio.us might have noticed less links being indexed by Google. Since PageRank is determined by the number and quality of links, having less links might have even resulted in Page Rank dropping on some of the websites.
This situation only proved that our marketing and promotion strategy should be diversified. It should include many different websites from which we hope to receive links from. If you advertise using many different methods, then you reduce the chance of anything going wrong. After all, there is very small probability that all of your marketing methods will stop working at the same time.
Biz, Blog, Tech, Web
There are a lot of blog directories worth submitting your blog to. Many of them are still accepting new websites, while some of them no longer exist. To save you some time, today I am going to present various directories and toplists that have worked and have accepted new members during the last few months. Here they are:
www.blogtoplist.com
www.blogratedirectory.com
www.topblogarea.com
www.blogging.blogranking.us
www.blogrankers.com
www.besthyip100.com
www.worldtopblogs.com
www.aliciadamita.ontoplist.com/join.php
www.topbloglists.com
Usually, the difference between directories and toplists is that to get most out of a particular toplist you are required to put its widget on your site. Fortunately, they do not take a lot of space. Once you put a widget on your site, every time a person visits your blog a particular toplist is going to register it. As a result of this, you are going to climb higher and higher in its rankings. When it comes to directories, you do not need to place any widgets. By simply submitting your site to them you will get a linkback and possibly a lot of unique visitors to your blog.
If some of the directories or toplists mentioned above do not work anymore please let me know by leaving a comment.
Blog, Web
Social bookmarking is a very effective way to market a blog. It is also a way to make sure that your highest quality posts will get noticed. Participating in social bookmarking can bring you a lot of traffic to your site that you have always dreamed about, and as a result, make your blog more popular. Why not start from today submitting the best articles from your blog to a few bookmarking sites, so that they would be viewed by thousands of visitors? All of the bookmarking sites listed below should be working as of today, and registering there should not take you more than a few minutes. I did not provide links to them as there can be very easily found through any browser. Here goes the list: Backflip, Blinklist, Blogmemes, Delicious, Google, Linkagogo, Magnolia, Rawsugar, Simpy, Spurl, and Smarking. The important thing about social bookmarking is that you should only try to submit your most valuable articles. Make sure that they are interesting and that they include some useful information. If you are going to submit such articles, then I am sure that you will receive a lot of traffic from social bookmarking websites. You might even gain loyal visitors this way.
Blog, Web
There are many reasons why a reader may want to contact a blogger. I think that most bloggers should allow their readers to contact them in some way. Webmasters can decide either to display their email publicly, or to have a contact form. Using a contact form will allow your visitors to contact you, but at the same time you will avoid spam by not giving away your email address.
There are also many blogs that can be contacted through email that is displayed when you enter their homepage. In such a case you just need to copy the address, and go to your email account to send them a message. On the other hand, you will not find an email address being displayed anywhere on many blogs. Many of them will be using a contact form plug-in. Here are only some reasons to have this plug-in installed:
-No one will see your email address, so no one will be able to send any spam. You will not be flooded with hundreds of email messages that you have no interest in. Spamming is a real problem these days so it is important to try to avoid giving away your email whenever possible.
-Contact form is an easier way for a reader to contact a blogger. He will not even have to go to his email account. Most readers will appreciate that they have such an convenient way of contacting you.
-Contact forms look more professional, and will make your blog more attractive to readers.
Blog, Web
When a blogger writes posts about some products or services, he might be tempted to write about them in a very positive way. While writing about positive aspects is not necessarily a bad thing, I believe that when you are describing a certain product or service, it is important that you also mention any negative aspects that might be important to your readers. What I mean is that you should not recommend certain websites/products that you personally would not be interested in at all. You should try not to be biased and not describe a product only in a positive tone. If you know that for some reason there is something not attractive about a product/service, then do not be afraid to talk about it. I think that doing so will bring you a lot of satisfaction. However, if you do not do so, it might alienate some of your blog readers if they will realize you are not being completely honest. Of course, every writer might have tendencies to be biased in some manner, but it is important to be as objective as possible. This might be especially important if you have a news blog, and your readers are counting on you to be objective.
While many bloggers strive to be objective, the truth is that in some cases it is hard not to be biased. There are very few bloggers who are not biased at all, but nonetheless it is important to try to be as objective as possible.
Blog, Web
One of the main requirements of being a successful blogger is to be able to publish posts on a regular basis. I do not think anyone will argue with that. When people visit a blog they like they like, they might be disappointed to find out that the blog has not been updated for a long time. Maybe there were no new posts published, because the author of the blog was either on holidays, or simply was too busy with his life. In any case, visitors are not going to like that. If a reader noticed that a blog is being neglected, he might be more likely to completely stop visiting it if the publisher does not update it.
It is not always an easy task to maintain regularity in one’s blogging life. When it comes to regular jobs, your boss might be demanding and makes you stay after hours. This has some advantages, because you are going to be motivated because of that. With blogging it is different, because there might be nobody who is going to tell you what to do, and that is why blogging is a lot harder than most other jobs. One possible way to keep your blog regularly updated is to prepare a few posts in advance, and then schedule your blogging platform to post them for you. This way the posts are going to be stored on your blogging platform, and they are not technically going to be posted from your computer at that time. Many bloggers take advantage out of this feature, and because of that, their posts are published very regularly.
Blog, Tech
There are so many blogs on the Internet that there is a very steep competition. The competition is so steep, that if you want to attract many people to read your posts, you should make sure that your readers will find your post interesting just after reading the first paragraph. This can be accomplished by using phrases that will interest your visitors or including an image. Images are a great way to attract attention, and once you hook someone into reading the first sentence of your post, you need to further interest him by including a sentence that will draw your readers to read the rest of the post. This can be done in multiple ways. For example, you can summarize your opinion in the first sentence, and if this will be an unusual one, then I am sure that it will make people more interested in reading the rest of your post. I can’t really give an easy formula for writing the first paragraph, but as I said, there are many ways to do so. Try to simply write something that will interest your readers. Remember that a nice image can do wonders, so don’t forget to use them.
Blog, Web
There are a lot of websites discussing how to obtain an appropriate software for your podcast. However, once you have your podcast ready it is time to publish it. Here there are at least a few possibilities how to do it:
• If you have a website or a blog, you can simply upload your podcast. This is the most obvious things to do. Check out however how much data you are allowed to store. That is because audio files are usually quite large, so you might soon run out of bandwidth and your listeners will no longer be able to listen to your podcasts. You may also have your hosting account blocked if you use too much bandwidth.
• Find a podcast hosting service that is either free or does not cost too much. Believe me, there are services which will not charge you a lot. They will be especially helpful for you if you do not want to host a podcast on your own blog or a website. I cannot recommend you any podcast hosting services, but you can try to Google it.
Overall, you should remember that the popularity of podcasts is growing, and that they may become very popular in the upcoming years.
Blog, Web