Two Awesome Ways to Find Duplicate Page Titles [How - To]

As anybody in SEO knows pretty well, Page Title is one of the most important element in optimizing for search. It is high-priority on Google's list as well as Bing and Yahoo. They serve two main purposes - 1. Getting you in SERP's (Search Engine Ranking Positions) and 2. Making the searcher click on your listing (if written with focus). Ergo, two most important aspects are covered by it, your search engine rankings and your CTR for organic listings.

Google recommends all Page Titles to be different and unique in order to avoid factors referring to a page as duplicate. It helps the search engines give due credibility to the original pages and not split up points or penalize the site. Note: There are many more factors that calls for duplication, not page titles alone. But it is highly significant to have separate page titles nevertheless. Large portals, e-commerce sites face these issues in abundance due to similar product ranges, manufacturer content and more. If you have thousands of pages indexed on the site, it's crucial that you do a page title duplication check. Here are two effective ways of how to check duplicate page titles.

1. Google Webmaster Tools (I love these people, I do)

Log into your Google Webmaster Tools account and under Diagnostics > HTML suggestions you will find Google's own analysis of the indexed pages with duplicate page titles and other meta content including description. What more can you ask for. You can further export the list of URLs in CSV and work through it. Easy?

2. XENU
Traditionally used to check broken links, it can very well be used to identify similar page titles. Just run your site and then sort the TITLE heading ... all the similar page titles will group together. It will even include the image titles and all.

You may have to be patient with Xenu in case of large sites in order to take into account all links, but it'll get the work done!

I have tried and tested both these duplicate page title finder tools. Both have their own advantages, in fact, it's better to use the two together for a thorough approach and iron out any loopholes.

Please share your ideas and experiences to find duplicate page titles or other duplicate content too!

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Youtube Marketing Guide - How to Drive Traffic to Your Site from Youtube

Every one of us has used YouTube one time or the other from ‘Just fun’ to Informational to Business Use. I don’t think a single day passes by when I have not seen 2-3 YouTube videos in a day for some or the other reason. YouTube gets more than 2 Billion Visitors a Day, with average person spending around 15 minutes on it every day. (Whoa! - Big numbers for marketers)

Needless to say, today YouTube has thus gained an iconic status where it has created overnight Sensations in the world through its phenomenal Viral Effect – I am sure you’ve heard of Susan Boyle or the Gillette Guy. Not to forget the ever so popular Justin Bieber is said to have started his journey here.

What’s so great about YouTube?

• It’s the best way to generate a massive viral affect. (I am not saying it, see the results)
• People have started preferring Audio visual aids then written word. It’s the shifting trend.
• It’s extremely search engine friendly.
• A video is far more credible to establish brand identity & recall. (Many have become celebrities of their field)

Bottom line – It would be highly unwise to not include YouTube in your Social Media & Viral marketing strategy.

So how can you drive traffic from YouTube to your site?

YouTube marketing has a simple theory. More Number of Views = More Traffic to Your Site.

Therefore the Key is to strive for high amount of views on your video, rest all will fall into place.

Just like a website or a blog post – you need to take care of the on page + off page optimization and marketing of YouTube video (or channel). Poorly constructed profiles and descriptions are a kick in your own butt. It’s not too much work, but does require diligence.

Pull It! (Helps you with improved search rankings & pulling traffic)

1. Tags - of extreme importance on YouTube, the Search results ranking from YouTube or search engine is much dependent on these. Use proper Tags (Just like Keywords) and utilize the word limit to max. Long Tail Tags are also fine.
2. Description – a thorough yet useful description of the video is a must. You can try adding few keywords too. Please don’t forget to add the ‘Hyperlink URL’ in your description area. If it isn’t linked, there are far less chances of user going to your website. Also fill the website field in profile details.
3. Thumbnail – It’s really important to have an eye-catching thumbnail. YouTube suggests thumbnails and you should select one that is most appealing. The graphic stimulus is very strong while selecting which video to click of from all the results.
4. Title – Just like selecting the title of a blog post, it’s important to select a keyword rich but relevant title for your YouTube video. Try not to keep it same as 10 other videos on the site (do some research). Instead follow the Keywords + Catchy Formula

Push It! (for the viral effect and marketing)

1. Direct Videos on Site - Have your videos run on the home page or other relevant pages of your blog/website. Not only a treat to your visitors but will increase the number of video views and thus improve the overall video rankings on YouTube.
   
2. Watermarks & Links - In the video itself, you need to add a static link of your website in a prominent way – possibly multiple times to reinstate it in the viewers mind. Preferably have a 3-5 second long Website Credit in the start and end page. You can alternatively use Watermark throughout the video.
3. LinkedTube - YouTube does not allow linking the video in any way on the site, however the embedded player can be enhanced with the use of tools like LINKEDTUBE which lets you add an active link to your website. It’s a fantastic add on and will improve the traffic to your website.
4. Activity Sharing - Under the settings panel on your YouTube account, you’ll find ACTIVITY SHARING which automatically connect your video to number of social networking sites. USE IT.
5. Optimize Visibility - Use your YouTube video / channel link in your email signatures, site and other collaterals. The more distributed -> more viral affect -> more reverse traffic to site.
6. Bookmarking & Sharing - Add & share the Videos to your Facebook Pages and Profiles. Bookmark them in essential sites like Digg, Reddit, and stumbleupon.  (It’s all about cross- marketing).
7. YouTube Networking – Start commenting on other relevant videos and encouraging comments on your own videos. You need to Network with other YouTuber’s to start building a community leading to consistent traffic.

Also, some people must be wondering why I haven’t mentioned FEATURED videos – Frankly, if you dwelling too much on it then you are wasting valuable time which can be used to focus on sure shot methods. Leave that to chance or in case you have lots of money.

P.S – None of this will really work if you are making crappy & boring videos. Content Rules.

This was originally a guest post by me for a dear friend and excellent online marketer on his blog. (themarketingweekly)

To stay updated about the latest on the blog, Subscribe to the Blog Email updates (Here) or Connect with me on Twitter. 

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How to Use Technology to Stay Updated - Remain on Top of Your Work Field

Often you must have felt Outdated or Less in loop of Work and current happenings in spite of being from that industry, for that matter any walk of life. One does want to do it but again, chasing information becomes a problem – where to go, spend considerable time surfing the net, spend money and what not. All these become the ifs and buts of the lazy mind and thus end up being neglected.

Just being good at what you do is not enough these days. It’s equally important to Stay Up to date with latest happenings and information about your Industry & ancillaries especially if you are related to the every second changing Technology & Web Industry.

Thanks to Technology again, it’s become quite easy today. You don’t need to chase the information, it comes to you!

These are some easily and freely available ways that you can use to gather information automatically –

RSS Feeds

Every Site & Blog today has RSS / Atom Feeds to syndicate content. Just subscribe to it. Popular options to read RSS feeds on are 1. Inbox 2. Outlook RSS feeds 3. Your RSS Reader like Google Reader, Bloglines etc. Choose the one which is most convenient to you.

Google Alerts

This is my most favorite one. As if now, my Google alert count is 37. It sounds a lot maybe, but I can easily say that I know everything before my boss does :) .

How to Set up Google Alerts? Well that’s easy...

Go to http://google.com/alerts > Fill the Search Term / Keywords You want to be notified about and enter other settings as suitable > Click Create Alert.

Tip: Remember like Search engines, Google alerts also differentiate between just BLOGGING TIPS or “BLOGGING TIPS”. Read in Detail here 

Be a Smart Surfer

Every time you are surfing and come across a blog or site which seems of interest or help, you must subscribe to its Newsletter or RSS Feeds. Indefinitely. I know we don’t like our inboxes to be junked, but it’s always an option to unsubscribe in case you want to in future – much better than trying to find the site later.

Use Social Media to the Max

As every main blog / site is now on social media mainly Twitter & Facebook you can follow or fan them and automatically new information about it would start showing in your timelines. Easy, Right?

Subscribe to Industry Leaders

Industry Leaders, e.g Mashable for Social Media, Engadget for Gadgets are not only information carriers but trend setters and opinion pools. Subscribe to them in one or the other way (from above)

Use all these methods and find out whether you had more information in the next meeting or someone else?

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Easily Convert PPT to Video with Multiple Benefits

How to Convert Powerpoint presentation (PPT) to Video for Free? 

I searched a lot for this solution as sometimes my work requires me to post presentations / videos across web; came across many softwares but din't find anything satisfying or convenient till I came across this post by Amit Agarwal on his blog which solved my problem. Thanks a ton for that!

A lot of you must have heard of AUTHORSTREAM, an online presentation sharing engine that allows you to upload your Power Point presentations online for free.

It allows you to upload any Power point presentation upto 1 GB in PPT, PPS, PPTX and PPSX formats. Once you have uploaded the presentation (with or without music) you can now simply convert your ppt to a video file absolutely free. Here's how

1. Upload the Presentation
2. Go to 'Your Presentations' under 'Your Stuff'
3. Find the Convert to Video option next to your presentation in dashboard and hit it

Depending on your presentation file size it will take some time to convert into video. After the process is completed, you can download it through the download video icon

Little Heads up > there are chances of your video quality not being as good as your presentation. But it totally works. 

Other benefits of using Authorstream -

1. Authorstream is great for SEO purpose. The site is excellent and can get you indexed easily for keywords. Make sure you fill proper details and tags.

2. You can integrate Authorstream with Youtube! Authorstream will automatically send your converted presentations to Youtube without any effort. This will save you another bunch load of time 

3. Authorstream itself is a highly popular site (4141 Alexa rank), Your links and videos on the site gives you more visibility & branding.

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Interesting little Gmail Tip with Giant Uses!

A lot of you must have heard or read about this Gmail Hack (or probably a feature) which can be really useful for management of emails and other linked accounts. It can be a fine answer to "how to to manage gmail account better"

Here we go -

Lets say, This is your gmail email id:

Myaccount@gmail.com

Now, These are also your Gmail Ids 

My.Account@gmail.com

or M.yaccount@gmail.com

or myacc.ount@gmail.com

or my.acc.ount@gmail.com

Puzzled? 

Well Gmail does not identify the [.] character. It only reads the sequence of letters. So you can insert the [.] anywhere on the Email id (even multiple) and the email shot will always reach your main inbox i.e. myaccount@gmail.com

That was the first hack.

Secondly,

Another way for creating similar email id's is -

Myaccount+Twitter@gmail.com

or Myaccount+Bond007@gmail.com

or Myaccount+work@gmail.com

All these are also same and you will end up receiving email to your main inbox again i.e. myaccount@gmail.com

How can you use this gmail feature?

1. You can have your social media or registrations on other sites linked to these email id's. For e.g. you can create multiple twitter accounts with the single email id using the feature. No need to create number of email id's. (It's been six months since I am using this modified email id with a twitter account and I have had no issues till date, I hope it goes on)

2. Instead of using x no. of email address and inboxes on various sites, all your email management can be routed to this one inbox. If you label the different id's to related tags (labels as called in gmail), you can have a much smoother email time. Like I route all my twitter emails to my.account@gmail.com whereas my actual id is myaccount@gmail.com

The labeling option combined with this gmail id hack helps me easily identify the reason and source of email.

Thats that for now. Looking forward to comments if that was helpful! 

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7 Must Have Firefox AddOns to Make Your Online Life Much Easier

BEST FIREFOX ADDONS for your daily needs

If you are new to Blogging or Internet marketing, chances are that a lot of your useful time is wasted in operational & trivial stuff. Like when you want to capture a particular part of the web page so you end up Print Screening and then using a photo editor to crop image and then save it back. Maybe one or two such requirements a day won’t be a hassle but what if you have to deal with trivial stuff in BULK everyday!

Firefox is awesome – It’s a God gift to people who want to increase efficiency and cut down on redundant time. (Google Chrome is trying to catch up, but I still recommend Firefox due to the vast number of Add Ons already available.)

Here’s a List of Top Firefox AddOn’s I just can’t do without, they’ll make your work much more convenient – Trust me, they are damn useful

1. Fireshot

You can capture any web page with fireshot in one click and save the image as per your choice in whatever format (png, jpeg, bmp etc). Great part about Fireshot is that you can directly send the captured images through email, or upload it to the web or open in external editor. Captures Flash as well. Can be used from Navigation tool bar as well as Bottom bar.

2. Pixlr Grabber 

Another great FireFox addon to capture web pages. Quite similar to Fireshot but lets you save in only PNG form. What's great about Pixlr Grabber? It lets you see the Dimensions of any defined area on the page making it a great tool for designers and bloggers to customize according to the given size.

3. Shorten URL

It lets you shorten long URL from context menu or toolbar button with your selected URL shortener and display the result in location bar. Supports more than 100 URL shorteners. (I use Bit.ly). Its a great addon because it allows to convert any damn webpage into a bit.ly (or whatever you choose) short link and thus makes it easy to place it anywhere like Twitter, Facebook etc.
Tip: If you use Bit.ly for all your short links, it becomes easier to track the click rate through Bit.ly site or the next add on I talk about.

4. Bit.ly Preview

Its simple, if you have this add on and mouse hover any Bit.ly link on the webpage, you'll get to see the original link and the Number of clicks on that link. Makes it easy for you to track which of your sent out links are more popular and analyze your content strategy. I just love this one. 

Tip: Place any Bit.ly short link on your location bar uptop, add +1 to its end and you will see the number of clicks for that link.

5. Morning Coffee 

How easy it would be to not type in or find the URLs of the sites you visit all the time? I have to  necessarily go through 15 websites everyday. Thank god for Morning Coffee Addon that I don't have to remember or manually open everything everyday I start my comp. Just hit it and all sites (pre set) will open at once in tabs.

6. Firebug

If you want to understand CSS, HTML etc then Firebug will put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page. All the developers & designers I know use it. It might not be of a great usage if you are a non technical person, but can be very handy in understanding your blogs & sites.

7. Bookmark-let by Hootsuite: Hootlet 

If you are a massive twitter user (& Hootsuite user) I'd say you get this handy bookmarklet on your browser. It opens into a pop up window with the Title of the Page attached with the page's Hootsuite URL (ht.ly, ow.ly). You don't have to type in the text anymore or manually shorten the URL, It's all there! Can be edited as per your need. I use it for the Title Text , remove the hootsuite url and add my bit.ly one. 

It all adds up!

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I Introduce You to - Search Cheat Sheet by Google (Part 1)

How many times have you seen an examiner handing over Cheat Sheets? .. and then comes Google :)

Well not exactly Cheat codes as named but these are some cool tricks that Google has listed to make your search more efficient and precise. 

OPERATOR EXAMPLE

FINDS PAGES CONTAINING..

vacation hawaii

the words vacation and Hawaii .

Maui OR Hawaii

either the word Maui or the word Hawaii

"To each his own"

the exact phrase to each his own

virus –computer

the word virus but NOT the word computer

+sock

Only the word sock, and not the plural or any tenses or synonyms

~auto loan

loan info for both the word auto and its synonyms: truck, car, etc.

define:computer

definitions of the word computer from around the Web.

red * blue

the words red and blue separated by one or more words.

I'm Feeling Lucky

Takes you directly to first web page returned for your query.

More in Next Post - Stay Tuned

 

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