SOHO : Small Office Home Office
Freeware - Opensource software tips, tricks, tweaks & fixes for managing, securing, improving the performance of SOHO Desktop, Laptop, Networks

Friday, March 18, 2011

How to drive traffic by google image search?

In the search to find the best ways to promote or drive traffic to your site, Google Image Search is often overlooked. While ranking for terms in Google Image Search is unlikely to ever bring you massive amounts of traffic a la Digg or StumbleUpon, the steps to optimize your images for Google Image Search are extremely simple, and the traffic gains you do make more than make up for the effort. 



The first two steps are more SEO 'common sense' than anything else--they should always be performed in order to include extra keywords in your content so that you'll provide more context for your pages. In addition to being common sense for general SEO, they are an absolute necessity for good results in the Google Image Search.
Steps to Optimize Your Images for Google Image Search
  1. Use Descriptive Filenames - A filename can present you with your first chance to include keywords in your images. Title the image with a word or short phrase which describes what is in the image. For example, rather than using a camera-assigned filename such as DSC05443.jpg, use a filename like barry-schwartz-chris-boggs-daron-babin-SES-chicago.jpg. Notice the way that I have used a dash (-) between the words in the title - this is commonly interpreted by Google as a space in the filename. This is the most search engine friendly way of labeling images.
  2. Use the alt tag! - the alt tag in your image link code will allow you to include some more keywords describing your image. Additionally, the alt tag text will be displayed by Google Image Search in place of the filename in each search result. Therefore, use that as well when linking your code. Here is an example for the example image we are using: <img src="/images/barry-schwartz-chris-boggs-daron-babin-SES-chicago.jpg" alt="Barry Schwartz, Chris Boggs and Daron Babin at SES Chicago" />
  3. Get Included in Google Image Labeler - The Google Image Labeler is a game in which you and a partner collaborate to write tags for images presented. You receive points when you both submit matching tags. The matching tags are then assigned to the images, and taken into consideration for the Google Image Search search results. In order to ensure that your images are included, access your Google Webmaster Central account, and go to the management page for your site. In the left hand bar, you will see an link which says ‘Enhanced Image Search’. Clicking this link will present you with the option to opt-in to the Enhanced Image Search features. This option signifies to Google that you are allowing them to use tools such as the Image Labeler to assist in the indexing of the images on your site.
These steps will help ensure that you can get your images ranking in the Google Image Search. As I said above, GIS is not likely to drive nearly as much traffic as many other means; at the same time, the steps to optimize for GIS are quite simple.


Source :  http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/using-google-image-search-to-drive-traffic-to-your-site
Continue Reading...

Thursday, March 10, 2011

How to update Dynamic IP changes to multiples services on DD-WRT opensource router?

The goal of this article to is update dynamic IP with multiple service providers from network router.

Multiple Service Providers :
  • OpenDNS : We are using OpenDNS Basic on our network. It offers web content filtering, proxy / anonymizer blocking, whitelist / blacklist,  phishing protection, botnet protection, Two weeks detailed stat, typo correction, shortcuts and web based administration for free. In short - simple, safer and faster internet experience. 
  • DynDNS : DynDNS service allows you to point a hostname (like myname.dyndns.org) to a dynamic IP address, so that when you type in myname.dyndns.org, it will always resolve to your IP address regardless of whether it changes.

Router : Netgear WNR-3500L flashed with dd-wrt (v24-sp2)
DD-WRT is a Linux based alternative OpenSource firmware suitable for a great variety
of WLAN routers and embedded systems. The main emphasis lies on providing the easiest possible handling while at the same time supporting a great number of functionalities within the framework of the respective hardware platform used. More articles on this to follow. 
DD-WRT uses inadyn client to update DDNS (Dynamic DNS) with any one service provider. But in our case we need to update multiple service providers simultaneously. To achieve this we make use of a third party service called DNS-O-Matic.

  • DNS-O-Matic is a free service from OpenDNS and easy way to announce your dynamic IP changes to multiple services with a single update. Using DNS-O-Matic allows you to pick and choose what Dynamic DNS services you want to notify, all from one easy to use interface.
DD-WRT uses inadyn so the settings are:

DDNS Service: Custom
DYNDNS Server: updates.dnsomatic.com
Username: your username
Password: your password
Hostname: all.dnsomatic.com
URL: /nic/update?



Note on  DNS-O-Matic
  1. Supports 29 service providers . More : https://www.dnsomatic.com/wiki/supportedservices
  2. API tool for developers
  3. Client software for Windows, MAC and Linux : https://www.dnsomatic.com/wiki/software 
  4. Works with hardware supporting TOMATO and DD-WRT firmware.
Continue Reading...

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Promoting Your Blog


This is in no way a science or guarantee; it's simply a few suggestions with which many bloggers have found success.
Set your blog to Send Pings. When this setting is activated, your blog will be included in various "recently updated" lists on the web as well as other blog-related services.
Activate Your Navbar. Do this and you might start to see the effects right away! One of the features on the Blogger Navbar is a button called NextBlog - click it to visit the next Navbar-enabled blog.
Install Email This Post. If you use Email This Post on your blog, people will be able to forward your posts to friends. This may not have an immediate impact on your site stats but it enables others to publicize your blog for you.
Turn on Post Pages. By publishing every post as its very own web page with Post Pages, you ensure that your entries are way more link-able and more attractive to search engines.
Turn on your site feed. When people subscribe to your site feed in their newsreaders, they're very likely going to read your post.
Add your blog to Blogger's listings. When you add your blog to our listings it shows up in Nextblog, Recently Updated, and other places. It's like opting-in to traffic.
Write quality content and do it well. If your "style" is bad writing, worse grammar, no punctuation, and an ugly design, that might be okay for a niche crowd. But the idea here is to achieve mass appeal, so fix yourself up a bit.
Publish regular updates. Simple: the more you blog, the more traffic you'll get.
Think of your audience. A good way to build an audience is to speak to one in particular. When you keep your audience in mind, your writing gains focus. Focus goes a long way toward repeat visitors.
Keep search engines in mind. There are a few things you can do to make your blog more search engine friendly. Use post titles and post page archiving. This will automatically give each of your post pages an intelligent name based on the title of your post. Also, try to be descriptive when you blog. A well crafted post about something very specific can end up very near the top results of a search.
Keep your posts and paragraphs short. Strive for succinct posts that pump pertinent new information into the blogosphere and move on. Keep it short and sweet so visitors can pop in, read up, and click on.
Put your blog URL in your email signature. Think of how many forwarded emails you've seen in your day, and just imagine the possibilities.
Sumbit your address to blog search sites and directories. People look for blog content at Technorati every day, are you on their list? You should be. Submit your blog's url to Technorati, Daypop, Blogdex, Popdex, and any other site of that ilk you come across.
Link to other blogs. Links are the currency of the blogosphere and it takes money to make money so start linking.
Install a blogroll. It's a very simple yet effective social networking scheme and it has the same result as a simple link if not stronger: traffic! So if you don't have one yet, sign up for a blogroll and get that link-list going.
Be an active commenter. This is in the same vein as linking. Most comment systems also provide a way for you to leave a link back to your blog which begs a visit at the very least. So if you feel inspired, leave a comment or two in your blog travels. It behooves you.
Enable Following on your blog. Following a is a great way to keep your friends updated on the latest activity on your blog. New blogs will have this blog feature enabled by default, but for older blogs you will have to enable it from the Layout | Page Elements tab.


Source : http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=42377
Continue Reading...