“Top Commentators Plugin” Approach for getting backlinks

Getting Backlinks

The method, proposed by Smartbloggerz, we are going to present today is related to the process of building massive backlinks by leaving keyword centric comments on blogs having Top Commentators widget in their sidebar.

Even the comment section might not have a dofollow attribute, most of the blogs having Top Commentators widget give you dofollow backlinks.

Now just imagine if you are a Top Commentator of a blog having thousands of articles indexed in search engines. You would definitely see a great increase in your search rankings.

If you decide to be amongst the Top Commentators of big blogs like JohnChow, here is what the results could be:

Now let’s see how many indexed pages, JohnChow have on Google:

As you can easily see the huge amount of indexed pages of JohnChow and most of them have the Top Commentators widget which will bring you massive backlinks. Imagine if you just get yourself on Top Commentators list of such 3-4 blogs. Did you imagine that?

List of the Blogs using Top Commentators Plugin

I did plan to create a list for you, but there were others how did the already. So, I can offer you several links to the collection of these blogs:

• Riceblogger’s list: 40 blogs using the Top Commentators widget
• Blog o Ninja’s list: 48 blogs using the Top Commentators widget
• Shankerashi list: More than 100 blogs using the Top Commentators widget.

Installing Top Commentators Plugin to your Blog

If you plan to host yourself the Top Commentators Plugin on your blog to attract more traffic and new readers and commenters, you can do that easily. Find instructions on how to install the plugin on your Blogger blog here or here, and on your WordPress blog - here.

Plugin Usefulness for New Blogs

Some of the experts do not consider the plugin to be useful for freshly created blogs. Chidimar reports his observations that Top Commentator has been heavily abused in new Blogs. People from the Comment Spammers and Link Building Spammers via Comments categories come on New, Fresh and Empty Blogs only on Month startups to grab the top positions in Top Commentators Widget. They come often first week to stay on top and see if they have their place. And then they just vanish till the new month starts. It’s because they know this Blog is fresh, new, has small visitors base and exposure, and no one will come to challenge the top position in the widget, leaving a spammer on top.

Google Launches New Blogger Template Designer

In the beginning of March 2010, Blogger has introduced a new feature called Template Designer. Blogger platform is mostly popular among newcomer bloggers. As soon as they mature, they understand the significant limitations Blogger has. One of these limitations, and a really big one, was the fairly limited amount and quality of the built-in templates. Therefore, you could see multiple twin blogs on the Web cooked in the same kitchen of the limited fantasy of the Blogger designers. The new development can change the situation and give Blogger a strong competitive advantage over the rivals.

According to Google, this tool will significantly broaden the ability of users to modify the look of their blog. This Blogger Template Designer includes ready-to-use professional designs, pre-built templates that can be further modified, a color-adjustment control to tweak the blog's color palette, stock photos for background use and an advanced interface for publishers who know HTML and CSS.

Main Features of the new Blogger Template Designer Tool


1. Templates

This feature allows you to choose from 15 predesigned templates split into four families: Simple, Picture Window, Awesome Inc, and Watermark. Each of the templates can be arranged with 1, 2, or 3 column layouts, complete control over the size and arrangement of the columns, and different background color scheme.

2. Background

As the name of this feature you can adjust and change the background color of your blog template. You can choose from variety of images uploaded on iStockPhoto. In advanced mode you can also customize the color of special elements.

3. Layout

Here you can adjust the columns of your body. You can make a 2 or 3 column sidebar floating to the left or right. You can also customize the width of your blog. You can also make your footer 1 column 2 columns, or 3 columns.

4. Advanced Design

This is the most important and advanced feature as in this feature you can customize the look, color, style of each and every element on your blog including blog title, blog description, post title, post footer, gadgets, images, etc.

To use this feature you have to first log into http://drafts.blogger.com. Than navigate to layouts and click on template designer (you can see in the bellow image).

Video Presentation of the new capabilities:

New Blogger Template Designer 2010

Sources and Additional Information:

http://bestbloggerwidgets.blogspot.com/2010/03/blogger-new-features-template-designer.html

http://bloggerindraft.blogspot.com/2010/03/blogger-template-designer.html

http://blogger.com/templates

How often should you blog?

One of the blog readers asked to share my experience on the topic of how frequently the blog should be updated to reach the best outcomes. Let’s see what the expert’s advices are.

So how do you decide how often to blog? What’s the magic formula? There’s no definitive approach to figuring this out. Instead, take time to ponder the recommendations offered by WebWorkerDaily to help you find what will work for your blog.

• Review your business goals. Increasing blog readership is a worthy goal, but how does the blog support your business’ goals? If your web site itself is the income generator, then you’ll need frequent fresh content. If the blog is for promoting you as an expert in your field, which in turns supports your consulting business, then you probably don’t need to blog daily.
• Know your audience. What jobs do your readers have? How much of their time do they have for reading blogs? How active are they on blogs and social media? What industry do your readers come from? Are they reading during the workday or after hours?
• Identify your contributors. Is your publication a one-person blog or a group blog? Group blogs cut the chances of burnout.
• Look at the length of your posts. Some people with large followings write 1,000+ word posts; these people tend to publish less often. Readers may better tolerate daily posts when they’re shorter: 200-400 words. Some bloggers mix it up with longer posts on a weekly basis, with shorter posts filling in the other days.
• Check web site stats. After adjusting your blogging frequency, check to see if the stats have changed. Remember that while a change could be associated just with the frequency or posting, it could also be because the content quality or level of blog promotion changed.

So, Mister S., did you get the answers? Probably, no… Because, the question on the blog publishing frequency has multiple dimensions, and does not have a magic answer. Let’s say, more you write, you have a higher chance to get the wide-spread exposure in a shorter amount of time. Not only do new blog posts give people a reason to return to your blog, but they also help your blog in terms of search engine optimization. Each new post is a new entry point for people to find your blog through search engines. The more entry points, the better the chances are that new readers will find your blog.

However, do you have abilities and time to publish several quality posts on a daily basis? In most cases, frequent publishing is a sign of a splog, not a busy blogger. So, be sure to offer the attractive content as much as you can. But, do not lose a fun of writing and do not get burn out, rushing for publicity. I would say that consistency of the posts is more important than frequency. If your readers are used to your two posts a week, do not disappoint them by long gaps. They might just leave and never come back.

Blogging for fun

Twitter Warfare against Spammers and Scammers

Twitter has announced that it is to start scanning all tweets for links to sites which may cause harm to its users.

The system, which goes live today, is similar to those used by services such as Gmail and will automatically check link destinations. Links embedded in personal messages will be routed through Twt.li, Twitter’s own URL compressor for added safety.

Del Harvey, director of Twitter’s trust and safety team, elaborated the new policy in a blog posting:

Today, we’re launching a new service to protect users that strikes a major blow against phishing and other deceitful attacks. By routing all links submitted to Twitter through this new service, we can detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of bad links across all of Twitter. Even if a bad link is already sent out in an email notification and somebody clicks on it, we’ll be able keep that user safe.

Since these attacks occur primarily on Direct Messages and email notifications about Direct Messages, this is where we have focused our initial efforts. For the most part, you will not notice this feature because it works behind the scenes but you may notice links shortened to twt.tl in Direct Messages and email notifications.

Users won't notice any difference because the service works behind the scenes, Twitter said. But users may start to see short links using Twitter’s own “twt.tl” URL shortener in direct messages and e-mail notifications.

Phishing scams on Twitter usually involve attackers trying to obtain the login credentials of Twitter users, and then sending spam messages from the stolen accounts in a bid to make money, Twitter said on its blog last month. Twitter also fights phishing scams by watching for affected accounts and resetting passwords, it said.

Phishing attacks ballooned on Twitter last year as the service grew in popularity. Twitter's new link-screening service comes after it last year started using Google's Safe Browsing API to check for malicious content in links posted by users.

Sources and Additional Information:

http://blog.twitter.com/2010/03/trust-and-safety.html

http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/09/twitter-phishing/

http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/news/2259231/twitter-takes-action-spammers

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/03/twitter-phishing-scams.html

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9168378/Twitter_to_begin_screening_some_links_for_phishing

Blocking Comments Spam with Akismet

Before Akismet I was spending more time deleting spam

 than creating content. Now I can focus on actually blogging!

— Sarah King

Automattic Kismet (Akismet for short) is a collaborative effort to make comment and trackback spam a non-issue and restore innocence to WordPress blogging, so you never have to worry about spam again. Akismet is free for personal use.

How does it work?

When a new comment, trackback, or pingback comes to your site it is submitted to the Akismet web service which runs hundreds of tests on the comment and returns a thumbs up or thumbs down.

Do I have to maintain a blacklist?

Nope! Part of the idea of Akismet is that you're always protected up-to-the-second from the latest dirty tricks of spammers. There's no maintenance, no upgrading, no hassle.

Where does the spam go?

When the plugin catches something as spam it saves it in the database for 15 days in case you want to check it out manually and then automatically deletes it. In the unlikely event something gets incorrectly identified as spam you can correct it and it submits the "false positive" back to Akismet for analysis and improvement of our system. If a spam comment happens to get through and you mark it as spam within WordPress, it does the same thing. Akismet becomes more effective the more you use it.

Non-English comments

Akismet woks well on multi-language comments as well.

Downloading and Installation

1. Download Akismet WordPress Plugin and unzip it.

You don't have to do anything to configure Akismet besides entering your API key, just activate and relax. However you do need at least WordPress version 2.0 or above for everything to work. The latest version of the plugin is 2.2.7.

2. Upload the plugin file to your WordPress plugins directory inside of wp-content.
3. Activate it from the plugins menu inside of WordPress.
4. Enter your API key.
5. Enjoy the results.

Developers’ website: http://akismet.com/

Video Clip on the plugin installation: