Snippet IT » Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing http://www.snippetit.com IT News, Programming, Internet and Blogging Tue, 13 Sep 2011 02:35:23 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.3 Short URL: Top 5 Websites That Provide Free Short URL Service http://www.snippetit.com/2009/12/short-url-top-5-websites-that-provide-free-short-url-service/ http://www.snippetit.com/2009/12/short-url-top-5-websites-that-provide-free-short-url-service/#comments Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:56:55 +0000 szehau http://www.snippetit.com/?p=347 What is a "short URL"? Short URL or tiny URL is an URL used to represent a long URL For example, http://tinyurl.com/45lk7x can be used to represent and will be used to redirect to http://www.snippetit.com/2008/10/implement-your-own-short-url.

Why people use short URL? First, because it is easy to remember. Imagine when you read an article on a magazine or newspaper that shows you a site with 100 characters and complicated URL. How can you remember the long URL, put down the magazine or newspaper, sit in front of your computer and type out the URL at web browser correctly? When the URL is short, for example tinyurl.com/45lk7x, you can do it easily.

Second, short URL is more portable. For instance, when you want to send your friend a SMS that contains some message and an URL, with short URL you can save a lot of space and give you more space to type your message.

Most short URL services are free and easy to use. You just need to provide the long URL and it will generate a new short URL for you. Here are the list of most popular short URL websites sorted by its traffic rank (by Alexa):

  1. bit.ly (Alexa traffic rank: 220)
  2. tinyurl.com (Alexa traffic rank: 660)
  3. is.gd (Alexa traffic rank: 10,833)
  4. ff.im (Alexa traffic rank: 45,395)
  5. twurl.nl (Alexa traffic rank: 120,846)

If you are good in computer programming language, you interested in implementing your own short URL.

Related Articles

]]> http://www.snippetit.com/2009/12/short-url-top-5-websites-that-provide-free-short-url-service/feed/ 0 Google Chromium OS http://www.snippetit.com/2009/11/google-chromium-os/ http://www.snippetit.com/2009/11/google-chromium-os/#comments Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:29:16 +0000 szehau http://www.snippetit.com/?p=332 Google Chromium OS or Chrome OS is an open source project created by Google that aims to build an operating system that provide fast, simple and more secure computing experience. The new OS is target for people who spend most of their time on the web.

The following videos explain in detailed what Chrome OS is:

What is Google Chrome OS?

Chrome OS Security

Chromium OS & Open Source

Chromium OS Fast Boot

The basic architecture of Google Chromium OS is pretty simple. Instead of loading all the stuffs by ordinary operating systems (like drivers, detecting hardware, kernel and etc.), the computer that runs Chromium OS directly load the necessary softwares (in this case, the Chrome browser and other multimedia stuffs) and does not need to load other inessential stuffs.

It is pretty interesting to go through how why Google builds up the Chromium OS. Although the project is still in very early stage, you can get involve in the project or to download the source code to have a test run. You can join them at the Chromium Projects website for Chromium OS.

Chrome OS will be available for consumers around end of next year. If you can't wait for the final release of Chrome OS, you can download Chrome OS VMWare/VirtualBox image and run it as virtual machine on top of your current operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux).

Download it at your own risk because it is still in early development stage. However it should not have much risk since everything will be running in a virtual enviroment.

Stay updated with Google Chromium by visiting The Google Official Blog and The Chromium Projects website.

Related Articles

]]> http://www.snippetit.com/2009/11/google-chromium-os/feed/ 0 WordPress Plugin: Official StatCounter Plugin http://www.snippetit.com/2009/11/wordpress-plugin-official-statcounter-plugin/ http://www.snippetit.com/2009/11/wordpress-plugin-official-statcounter-plugin/#comments Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:42:42 +0000 szehau http://www.snippetit.com/?p=316 Official StatCounter Plugin is a plugin created by StatCounter to insert statcounter.com stats script into WordPress blog automatically. StatCounter is a  free yet reliable invisible web tracker, highly configurable hit counter and real-time detailed web stats.

Statcounter

If you have StatCounter and running it's script in your WordPress blog, it is recommended that you use this plugin instead of manually edit theme's source code or put the script at text box in the widget. This is because every time, you need to change a theme, you do not need to re-insert the code manually.

To install the plugin, simply log into your WordPress using administrator account and search for "Official StatCounter Plugin" under the install new plugin page. Or, you can also download the plugin from the WordPress plugin website: Official StatCounter Plugin

Related Articles

]]> http://www.snippetit.com/2009/11/wordpress-plugin-official-statcounter-plugin/feed/ 1 PayPal: Withdraw PayPal Money to Malaysia Bank Account http://www.snippetit.com/2009/10/paypal-withdraw-paypal-money-to-malaysia-bank-account/ http://www.snippetit.com/2009/10/paypal-withdraw-paypal-money-to-malaysia-bank-account/#comments Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:05:41 +0000 szehau http://www.snippetit.com/?p=306 Good news to all Malaysian who has PayPal account! You can now withdraw you PayPal account to you local bank account in Malaysia.

PayPal

Previously, Malaysians can only withdraw their money using debit card and the withdrawal is quite high too. In order to lose less than 1% of total money withdrawn, you need to withdraw at least USD100 to minimize the loses in transaction fee.

PayPal now offers better option to Malaysians. You can now withdraw your money for a withdrawal fee of RM3 for amount RM40 (minimum withdrawal) to RM400. Withdrawal fee for amount of more than RM400 is free!

PayPal Withdrawal Fees

To add a Malaysia bank account to your PayPal account, login into your PayPal account, click Profile > Add/Edit Bank Account.  Fill in you name, bank name, MEPS bank routing code, bank account number, re-enter bank account number and click continue for confirmation.

If you are not sure what is the MEPS bank routing number for your bank, simply click on the Details link next to the MEPS bank routing code text field, a list of major banks' routing code in Malaysia will be shown.

MEPS Bank Routing Code

Most Commented Posts

]]> http://www.snippetit.com/2009/10/paypal-withdraw-paypal-money-to-malaysia-bank-account/feed/ 1 Sitestimator.com: New Badge Released http://www.snippetit.com/2009/06/sitestimator-com-new-badge-released/ http://www.snippetit.com/2009/06/sitestimator-com-new-badge-released/#comments Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:34:28 +0000 szehau http://www.snippetit.com/?p=260 Sitestimator.com, a website value evaluation tool, has developed and released a new badge. The new badge comes with new design, one of most famous ads size on the Internet - 125 pixels height and 125 pixels width.

The new badge also show more information, giving user to view the important statistic at a glance. These information are including the estimated value of a site, PageRank, Alexa ranking and number pages crawled by search engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN).

To install the badge is pretty simple. Simply copy the following code into your website and everything else will be done automatically.

<!-- Sitestimator.com Widget from http://www.sitestimator.com -->
<script type="text/javascript"
  src="http://www.sitestimator.com/widget/ext-widget2.js"></script>
<noscript><a href="http://www.sitestimator.com">Estimate
  Site Value</a></noscript>
<!-- end Sitestimator.com Widget -->

Related Articles

]]> http://www.snippetit.com/2009/06/sitestimator-com-new-badge-released/feed/ 0 Wolfram|Alpha: A Computational Knowledge Engine http://www.snippetit.com/2009/06/wolframalpha-a-computational-knowledge-engine/ http://www.snippetit.com/2009/06/wolframalpha-a-computational-knowledge-engine/#comments Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:45:42 +0000 szehau http://www.snippetit.com/?p=250 Wolfram|Alpha is a computational knowledge engine. Unlike regular search engines (Google, Yahoo and Live) which return a list of relevant websites on queries, Wolfram|Alpha processes the queries to return an actual answer.

For example, key in "Who is Bill Gates?" in Wolfram|Alpha, instead of returning a list of relevant websites, it will tell you that Bill Gates is a business person, his date of birth is 28/10/1955 and place of birth is Seattle, Washington, United States.

Wolfram|Alpha

You can also key in a mathematical formula, for example " 200 + y = 300", and it will find the solutions for you.

Wolfram|Alpha

Wolfram|Alpha's creator, Stephen Wolfram, described the search engine as "a new paradigm for using the computer and the web".  Wolfram|Alpha is a long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone.  Enter your question or calculation, and Wolfram|Alpha uses its built-in algorithms and a growing collection of data to compute the answer.

Visit Wolfram|Alpha.

Related Articles

]]> http://www.snippetit.com/2009/06/wolframalpha-a-computational-knowledge-engine/feed/ 0 Bing: A New Search Engine from Microsoft http://www.snippetit.com/2009/06/bing-a-new-search-engine-from-microsoft/ http://www.snippetit.com/2009/06/bing-a-new-search-engine-from-microsoft/#comments Wed, 03 Jun 2009 12:05:34 +0000 szehau http://www.snippetit.com/?p=235 Bing or the "Google Killer" as said by some of the bloggers is a new powerful search engine from Microsoft. The search engine is still under beta testing but is running live as beta.

bing

Bing was set to go live by tomorrow (3rd June). Microsoft’s Bing has replaced its old search engine Live and later this year they announced to launch ‘Kumo’ the internal code name of Bing Search Engine.

This blog rarely receives traffics from Microsoft's Live search engine but it starts to receive some traffics from Bing website this few days. Hopefully this will be good news for most webmasters that the Bing may bring more relevant traffics to their websites.

Related Articles

]]> http://www.snippetit.com/2009/06/bing-a-new-search-engine-from-microsoft/feed/ 0 SEO: Get Higher Ranking in Search Engines http://www.snippetit.com/2009/05/seo-get-higher-ranking-in-search-engines/ http://www.snippetit.com/2009/05/seo-get-higher-ranking-in-search-engines/#comments Thu, 21 May 2009 14:23:06 +0000 szehau http://www.snippetit.com/?p=207 SEO or search engine optimization is a process of improving a website's traffic volume or traffic quality. SEO is not a simple process but involve deep studies the behavior of search engines like Google, Yahoo and Live.

SEO is very important to company especially those involve Internet businesses. Besides Internet businesses, other businesses also can make use of Internet to promote their brandings and product to the world wide.

If your websites can be ranked at the top or the first page of search engines, you can receive quite significant of quality, organic traffics and thus comes higher sales and lead volumes.

There are a lot search engine optimization tips out on the Internet but it is not easy be practice by most people whose most are not technical people. Doing the wrong steps may ruin a website and make it more worse. 

Recruiting a SEO expert may be a good way to optimize one's websites for most people. Selecting an SEO consulting company is vital. The SEO consulting must be experience in optimizing websites and should have their own research team on study various search engines' algorithm and search behavior.

Related Articles

]]> http://www.snippetit.com/2009/05/seo-get-higher-ranking-in-search-engines/feed/ 0 Twitter: What it is? http://www.snippetit.com/2009/05/twitter-what-it-is/ http://www.snippetit.com/2009/05/twitter-what-it-is/#comments Wed, 13 May 2009 22:55:44 +0000 szehau http://www.snippetit.com/?p=167

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

Twitter 

Twitter is a free social service and also a micro-blogging service that allow user send or post updates and read other people's updates known as tweets.

A tweet is simply a text up to 140 characters that will be displayed under user's profile. You can read others' tweet by "following" their profile. It is a very simple way to know what is your friends and family members doing now and also let them know your updates.

You can send tweet from various ways. You can send tweets from your mobile, from the twitter website, from software (e.g. TweetDeck) and also other services.

Other then sending updates, some people use it as a marketing tool. They send their websites/blogs updates or product links to twitter and get traffics from their followers. When you have a lot of followers, the traffics you will get when posting a link of your website/blog to twitter is very significant.

Start sign up yourself with twitter for free: twitter.com and start following your friends' profiles.

You may also want to follow me :)

Related Articles

]]> http://www.snippetit.com/2009/05/twitter-what-it-is/feed/ 0 Sitemaps: Submit Sitemaps to Google Webmaster Tools http://www.snippetit.com/2009/05/sitemaps-submit-sitemaps-to-google-webmaster-tools/ http://www.snippetit.com/2009/05/sitemaps-submit-sitemaps-to-google-webmaster-tools/#comments Thu, 07 May 2009 14:00:33 +0000 szehau http://www.snippetit.com/?p=153 Submitting your website's sitemaps to Google Webmaster Tools is one of the way to give Google information about your site.  Creating and submitting a Sitemap helps make sure that Google knows about all the pages on your site, including URLs that may not be discoverable by Google's normal crawling process.

Google Sitemaps 

To submit your website's sitemaps, sign in at Google Webmaster Tools. To do this, you will need to have a Google Account. If you have an Gmail account, then you already have a Google Account.

In Google Webmater Tools, you need to add your website first. After you have added your website, click your website name in the dashboard. Then click on Sitemaps (Dashboard  >  Sitemaps).

Key in your Sitemaps address and click Submit Sitemap and your Sitemaps will be in the list. It will take some times to allow Google bot to read your Sitemaps.

In the Sitemaps page, you can see when is the last download by Google bot and whether your Sitemaps is successfully crawled.

If you never create a Sitemaps before, please read Google's guides on Sitemaps. If your are running a WordPress blog, you can install the Google XML Sitemaps plugin that will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog automatically.

What other things you can tell Google about your website via Sitemap:

  • How often pages on your site change. Some of the pages (about page) may not update as frequent as the others (main page), so Google bot can crawl your pages more efficient.
  • The date each page was last modified.
  • The relative importance of pages on your site. For example, about page is less important than product page.

Read more about Google Sitemaps.

Most Commented Posts

]]> http://www.snippetit.com/2009/05/sitemaps-submit-sitemaps-to-google-webmaster-tools/feed/ 0 Google Adsense: Google Ad Planner – Showcase Your Site http://www.snippetit.com/2009/05/google-adsense-google-ad-planner-showcase-your-site/ http://www.snippetit.com/2009/05/google-adsense-google-ad-planner-showcase-your-site/#comments Wed, 06 May 2009 11:21:18 +0000 szehau http://www.snippetit.com/?p=151 Google Adsense has just announced "Google Ad Planner". Google Ad Planner's Publisher Center is used to showcase your site and to help publisher increase the visibility of your sites to potential advertisers.

Google Ad Planner 

If you have a Google Adsense account and looking to attract advertisers to target specific ads on your, you may want to looking into Google AdPlanner’s Publisher Center.

 

With Google Ad Planner, you can:

  • Define audiences by demographics and interests.
  • Search for websites relevant to your audience.
  • Access aggregated statistics on the number of unique visitors, page views, and other data for millions of websites from over 40 countries.
  • Create lists of websites where you'd like to advertise and store them in a media plan.
  • Generate aggregated website statistics for your media plan.

 

To start, your will need first to to claim you sites' ownership. You can either do it via Google Webmaster Tools or DoubleClick Directory.

Then manage your site information like description of your site, URL of a page on your site that describes ways to advertise with you, categorize you site content and define the advertising types, formats, and sizes that your site supports.

At last, you will need to control what Google Analytics' data you are going to share with advertisers.

See more about Google’s Ad Planner Publisher Center:

Related Articles

]]> http://www.snippetit.com/2009/05/google-adsense-google-ad-planner-showcase-your-site/feed/ 0 Google Adsense: Integrate Your Adsense Account with Google Analytics http://www.snippetit.com/2009/05/google-adsense-integrate-your-adsense-account-with-google-analytics/ http://www.snippetit.com/2009/05/google-adsense-integrate-your-adsense-account-with-google-analytics/#comments Wed, 06 May 2009 08:13:53 +0000 szehau http://www.snippetit.com/?p=148 For the past few months, Google Adsense has been gradually inviting publishers to integrate their AdSense accounts with Google Analytics. On April 29, 2009, Google has announced that this feature is now available to all publishers on its Adsense blog and Analytics blog.

Google Analytics and Google Adsense Integration 

To link up your Google Adsense and Google Analytics:

  1. Login into your Google Adsense account.
  2. At the main page ("Reports"->"Overview"), you will see a link "Integrate your AdSense account with Google Analytics", click on that link.
  3. Follow the on-screen instructions.

The video below explain the step by step linking process

Please note the integration may take few days to be done. After you have link your accounts, you will get some useful and interesting reports at Analytics. These are the reports you going to get:

  • The Top AdSense Content report allows you to see more details about specific pages on your site and analyze ad performance. For instance, if you find that some of your pages generate a high number of pageviews but aren't monetizing as well as other pages, you can focus your optimization efforts on improving these pages.
  • The Top AdSense Referrers report can help you see how different incoming traffic sources contribute to your revenue.
  • Last, the AdSense Trending report lets you analyze how your site generates revenue during different times of the day and different days of the week.

The reports are pretty comprehensive and detailed. You can now analyze your site content by keywords, page, and etc to find out what kind of content can make you profit the most.

Check out this video to get a better understanding of how to use these reports:

Enjoy the new feature and happy earning!

Related Articles

]]> http://www.snippetit.com/2009/05/google-adsense-integrate-your-adsense-account-with-google-analytics/feed/ 0 Gmail: Google Search in Gmail http://www.snippetit.com/2009/05/gmail-google-search-in-gmail/ http://www.snippetit.com/2009/05/gmail-google-search-in-gmail/#comments Mon, 04 May 2009 14:04:33 +0000 szehau http://www.snippetit.com/?p=142 New in Gmail Lab. You can now search the web just right in your Gmail and you can add the search result into your email and chat.

Google Search in Gmail 

To enable this feature in your Gmail, click on the "Settings" on top of your Gmail. Then click on "Labs" tab and look for "Google Search". Choose the enable option and click the "Save changes" button to apply the changes.

Google Search in Gmail 

Read more about Google Search in Gmail.

Related Articles

]]> http://www.snippetit.com/2009/05/gmail-google-search-in-gmail/feed/ 0 How to Request Reconsideration for Inclusion in Google Search Results http://www.snippetit.com/2009/04/how-to-request-reconsideration-for-inclusion-in-google-search-results/ http://www.snippetit.com/2009/04/how-to-request-reconsideration-for-inclusion-in-google-search-results/#comments Wed, 22 Apr 2009 10:34:21 +0000 szehau http://www.snippetit.com/?p=130 When a site's traffic from Google search engine dropped significantly or new site with a new domain has no traffic at all from Google search engine, you can expect that your site is no longer appear in Google's search results.

To ensure that your site is really not index by Google search engine bot, you can do a quick search in Google search by performing a Google site search for its entire URL. A search for [ site:www.snippeit.com ], for instance, returns the following results:

http://www.google.com.my/search?q=site:www.snippetit.com

If get no entries from the search result, your site may have been removed from Google index. There are several reasons that your site will be removed from Google's index such as your site may content hidden text or hidden links,  duplicate content, misleading or repeated words, page does not match Google's description, cloaked page, deceptive redirects, doorway pages, duplicate site or pages and etc. Google has a list of guidelines for website owner. If you want your website to be included in Google index, you will need to following the Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

After you have make sure your site is conformed to Google's Webmaster Guidelines, you can submit a request reconsideration for your site by logging in into Google Webmaster Tools. If you haven't registered with Google Webmaster Tools, you will need to register an Google Account and add your site to Google Webmaster Tools.

In Google Webmaster Tools' dashboard, click request reconsideration on your right. Select the site that you want to request for reconsideration and the action that you have done to meet Google's Webmaster Guildelines. After the submission, it may take few weeks to review your website.

Google has a video on this matter that explain why a site may not be appearing in search results and how to get it reconsidered.

Related Articles

]]> http://www.snippetit.com/2009/04/how-to-request-reconsideration-for-inclusion-in-google-search-results/feed/ 2 I Hate Spam Blogs http://www.snippetit.com/2009/04/i-hate-spam-blogs/ http://www.snippetit.com/2009/04/i-hate-spam-blogs/#comments Sat, 18 Apr 2009 17:53:08 +0000 szehau http://www.snippetit.com/?p=99 Recently I received ping back from a blog that I think it is a spam blog. Each time I publish a new post, the site copies my content and republish it on it own blog and send a ping back to my blog. I think it is a blog that uses WordPress and with some kind of autopilot plugin. I hate that. It stole my original content and republish on it's own website. Sigh what can I do?

There are a few but this is the most frequent one hxxp://www.realrumors.net. I think the website has copied more than 6000 orignal posts from other websites. Hmm.

Do you guys encounter any spam blogs?

Related Articles

]]> http://www.snippetit.com/2009/04/i-hate-spam-blogs/feed/ 0