25 Alternatives To Squidoo For Link Building
Many SEO experts are looking for sites like squidoo and hubpages.
Link building is an important SEO strategy to get tell Google that your site is indeed important. The more links, the better your site will get indexed and ranks better. A popular link building strategy is to make a squidoo lens and link back to your website.
So here is a list of 25 sites, where you can submit content and get free links (and some share revenue generated by your content).
1. Hubpages.com – A popular site similar to squidoo to publish online with easy to use, non-techie tools.
2. Gather.com – a user centric information sharing website where you can put all your information.
3. 43things.com – a Goal sharing website where you can make your lists about anything, mostly what you want to do. Allows to make Free blog to publish our own articles that link with our site.
4. Zimbio – Mesh of Rss feeds and articles, mostly deals with entertainment and celebrity related content.
5. Tumblr – Allows you to create your own blogs like url.tumblr.com where you can blog.
6. Knol – Google “product” though full with health articles. I have yet to see any positive reviews from it as far as link values are concerned.
7. advogato.org The site allow us to publish articles. After having an account we can publish articles.
8. asmallworld.net A community site that allows you to publish press releases and articles. You can share your views with others.
9. Weebly Weebly is a cool website that allows you to build your own web page for free. It offers some nice, user-friendly features that make it easy to create a professional looking site that will give you increased visibility and a place to link your Hub Pages, Squidoo lenses and Knols to as well as other domains.
10. Ligit: Ligit is a search powered web application for publishers. Unify your content and make it searchable.
11. Jimdo: Create Free Web Pages. Jimdo is easy to create web-pages, just sign-up, follow the link to your own Page, integrate pictures, videos and texts in seconds, change the design with a click, add as many pages as you want
12. Oondi: Oondi is a place for writers to publish their work, without having to worry about anything else. This allows them to focus on the writing itself instead of having to build a website, find visitors, find a reliable host, monetizing the traffic and so on.
13. Spongefish: SpongeFish is the place to share and show off your personal knowledge and expertise, and learn from others. People come to SpongeFish to show what they know and win prizes.
14. LaunchTags: Build a mini-page about your expertise, interests and know-how using text, pictures, video, links and blog feeds. Earn revenue brought in by your mini-pages.
15. Viviti.com lets you create a web site easily, with drag and drop. Start by choosing one of 100′s of templates (or design your own), then edit your site in place with content management toolbar.
16. Qassia: Share Your Intelligence and get exposure for your website in return. Qassia is a credit-driven intelligence engine coupled to a cascading tag-based web directory.
17. wetpaint.com: Create your own social website with wetpaint. you can create websites that mix all the best features of wikis, blogs, forums and social networks into a rich, user-generated community based website.
18. InfoBarrel: Write information and how-to guides and get paid
19. ScriblNotes: Education related site allows you to publish notes, upload typed documents, share study guides and earn money for top submissions.
20. Vox.com: Blogging platform which integrates with YouTube, Flickr, Photobucket, Amazon, iFilm and iStockphoto.
21. Ning.com: Ning is a social networking site that allows to create blog posts with photos, files and videos.
And of course the popular blogging and social platforms:
22. wordpress.com
23. Yahoo 360
24. blogger
25. Windows Live spaces
I’m convinced that this cannot be an exhaustive list. What would you include in this list?
Smiles,
ShriNagesh 
How To Identify And Delete Inactive Friends On Twitter
Often, social media users create accounts and for some reason, stop updating or using their profiles. While this is not the best practice, the most popular reason cited by people is lack of time.
These three tools are very useful and each have their own unique features.
MyCleenr
If you’re looking for a simple way to delete inactive accounts that you’re following, MyCleenr is the best (as long as you’re not following over 700 people). MyCleenr provides you with a simple overview of those that you are following on Twitter and the last time they tweeted. From there you can either click the “delete” button or leave them as a friend. Clicking the delete button will have MyCleenr automatically unfollows them for you. As simple as that.
This tool is especially useful, if you are yet crack your twitter 2K wall. Identify and unfollow the inactive users and make room to add active friends.
FriendOrFollow:
Friend or Follow allows you to segregate your twitter network into three categories.
- Those who follow you and whom you follow back = Friends
- Those whom you follow but don’t follow you back = Following
- Those who follow you and whom you don’t follow back = Fans
With this kind of segragated information, it becomes very easy for you to clean your twitter profile.
Twitter Karma:
@Dossy’s Twitter Karma (not twitterkarma.com) is a cool way to view your twitter network on a comprehensible interface. The tool analyzes your Twitter account and brings up a list of users you follow, users who follow you, and makes it easy to see whether you have a reciprocal or one way relationship with each.
This tool gives you an option to mass follow / unfollow.
Warning:
- All are third party tools
- There have been instances of erratic results
- Except friendorfollow, the other 2 tools ask for your twitter password
You’ll need to give Twitter Karma your username and password to let it do its stuff. But the same can be said for most Twitter desktop applications, so you’re always taking a leap of faith when you decide to trust anybody that’s not Twitter with your login information
# Bonus Tip:
To check if someone is following you, visit their profile page and on the sidebar, under the Actions, you should be able to see “message username” and “block username”. If they are not following you, you would only see “”block username”.
Obama’s Inaugural Speech Wordle Wallpaper
Click here for a larger version (700 x 464) of Obama’s inaugural speech wordle wallpaper
Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.
Here is my twitter account’s wordle wallpaper:
And my blog’s wordle wallpaper
You might want to subscribe to my RSS before rushing off to create your wordle wallpapers
Best,
Shri
How To Check If Your Google Analytics Is Installed Properly
SiteScan is a diagnostic tool from EpikOne that verifies if your Google Analytics (GA) Tracking Code is installed properly on your website.
SiteScan is designed to help you configure Google Analytics, whether using the “legacy” urchin.js code or newer ga.js tracking code. This diagnostic tool scans for several common configuration pitfalls and organizes the results in an easy to read CSV file. SiteScan identifies pages on your website that have Google Analytics Tracking Code properly and improperly installed. For pages with improperly installed tracking code, the associated error is noted and described in the report. This makes it easy for you to isolate the pages with tracking problems, fix them, and effectively manage your Google Analytics Tracking Code installation.
This is a sample report when I ran the diagnostic tool for web2mom.com
The detailed report was available for download as a CSV file. The file had the following information:
- URL of each page in the blog
- Page was tagged or not
- Google account number of each page
- Errors (pipe delimited) and
- Extra information
SiteScan checks the following on websites with old tracking code (urchin.js):
- Every Page Tagged with Tracking Code
- Every Page Calling the urchinTracker() Function
- Every Page Declaring a Google Analytics Account
- No New Tracking Code Found
- Query Parameters Check to Determine if a Filter is Required
SiteScan checks the following on websites with new tracking code (ga.js):
- Every Page Tagged with New Tracking Code
- Every Page Calling the pageTracker._trackPageview(); Method
- Every Page Declaring a Google Analytics Account
- No Old Tracking Code Found
- Query Parameters Check to Determine if a filter is Required
Limitations
SiteScan Does Not Scan or Complete the Following:
- Directories with more then 1000 files
- Pages that are protected by a Robot.txt file (meaning that if your pages are not indexed by Google, they will not be scanned).
- Pages that are password protected
- Checkout Pages or any area of your website that requires a certain sequence of events or trigger
Want to give the google analytics diagnostic tool a try? Check out www.sitescanga.com http://cli.gs/WSm7au
Good Luck,
Shri Nagesh
How To Use Google Analytics To Track Site Visitors From RSS feed
Understanding and analyzing where your site traffic comes from is vital to your site’s success. By using the campaign tracking functionality you can measure various mechanisms, including RSS feeds, that drive traffic to your site and make necessary changes.
Google Analytics’ campaign tracking is based on link tagging. You embed a piece of information in the link that drives traffic to your site. When the user arrives on your site, Google, using the UTM, decodes the embedded campaign information and tags the user.
This is how I track my RSS generated traffic by using the utm_medium tag.
How to add the utm_medium tag to your RSS links:
Original URL
http://feeds.feedburner.com/web2mom
Modified Url
http://feeds.feedburner.com/web2mom/?utm_medium=RSS
When someone arrives on your site with “utm_medium=RSS” in the URL Google will know that an RSS feed delivered the user to your site.
To see a summary of your RSS traffic, look at the Marketing Optimization > Marketing Campaign Results > Medium Conversion report. This report compares mediums with respect to number of visits, pageviews per visit, conversion rates, and average visit value. You should see a “RSS” listing in the “Medium/Source” column of the report..
You can add similar campaign tracking functionalties for email newsletters, organic searches or even affiliate links.
There are more than one way of doing this. But this is by far the easiest method, IMO.
Speaking of RSS, may I ask you to subscribe to web2mom’s RSS feed? 
Good luck & Smiles
Shri Nagesh
Twitter Tips For The Beginners
SMM (social media marketing) is the latest online marketing trend. SMM is a way to build brand recognition for your business and getting traffic to your website / blog through social media like facebook, myspace, flickr, youtube, digg and the like. Social media sites are web sites where news, photos, videos and pod casts are hosted through user submission. It is true that marketing through social media is time consuming. Twitter is an exception.
Twitter is a lot easier and simpler social networking and micro-blogging service. All you will need to do is answer the question, ‘what are you doing?’ in less than 140 characters. These short messages are called as tweets. Your tweets are immediately displayed on the your profile page and instantly delivered to other users who are following you.
How to start tweeting?
Sign up for a free twitter account. Consider using your real name rather than business name or some abstract alphanumeric combination. This will help build credibility. Change your profile, immediately. Include keywords about your business, interests or whatever you want to use twitter for. You can restrict your tweet delivery to those in your circle. Default setting is delivery to everyone
Click ‘find and follow’ to follow people from your aol, gmail and other email contacts who are already tweeting. You can also find people with similar interests by searching for a keyword. Click follow, if you find any interesting. My twitter name is ShriNagesh
Now you are all set to send your first tweet. Type a small message (max 140 characters including spaces) telling people what you are doing. You can send tweets through twitter website or instant messenger or SMS from mobile. You need to confirm your mobile number first. Do this by clicking devices.
If you think it doesn’t make any sense and is sheer waste of time, then you are under estimating twitter potential.
Twitter allows you to add links in the tweets. You can use this to display your own links. For ex: one of my tweets today was “Adding new web templates to my template site TemplateFair.com” (61 characters). Try out creative ways to make your tweets fun, resourceful, intriguing.
By tweeting frequently, following and being followed, you can grow a small community of people with similar interests and who recognize your name and your brand.
I downloaded a great time saver Twhirl. It is a third party application for twitter. If tweeting takes around 60 seconds, Twhirl cuts down that time to below 10 seconds.
Twhirl stays on the desktop (logged in). I don’t need to visit twitter website during my hectic workday. All I do is, click twhirl icon from the system tray and type a short “whatever i’m doing” tweet and send. Twhirl also notifies when I receive messages from my followers or the ones i’m following. So I don’t miss a thing and all without wasting my time.
You can also use twhirl to upload pictures to twitpic.com, a site to share photos.
There are many applications for twitter like tweetdeck (similar to twhirl), twittervision, which shows the geo position of the your twitter friends and so on.
Some Do’s and Dont’s:
- Remember that you are allowed max 140 characters. So Make sure your url is not very long, as it would be shortened to tinyurl. It’ll look something like tinyurl.com/xxxxx. It will not serve the purpose of improving brand recognition
- Tweet often
- Don’t sound like a marketing guy. Tweeters have sensitive noses and can sense marketer a mile away.
- Don’t send messages like “please visit my site. Here is the link”. You are supposed to be answering a question “what are you doing”
- Don’t strictly adhere to marketing tweets. they’ll sound boring after a while
Happy Tweeting.
Shri Nagesh
Watch Obama’s Inaugural Ceremony Live On Facebook Via CNN
Facebook’s massive portability strategy is undoubtedly working wonder. Obama’s inaugural ceremony can be watched right inside facebook while discussing/chating with your facebook friends.
Facebook and CNN collaborated and came up with this unique opportunity to experience the inauguration with friends on facebook.
Simply go to the CNN.com Live video player where you can log in using your Facebook account information.
Through facebook connect, you can chat with your friends on the chat window while watching the live streaming of the event. Update your Facebook status and comment on your friends’ statuses to share your thoughts and opinions, all while watching the inauguration in real-time.
More info on http://www.facebook.com/cnn and http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=48783697130 for more information and pictures.
This event is also the inauguration of merging traditional media and social media. Kudos to CNN & Facebook.
How To Track The Effect Of Your Tweets On Twitter
TweetEffect- When did you lose or gain twitter followers?
With TweetEffect, you can find out which of your Twitter updates made people follow or leave you.
Twitter is a great way to keep in contact, distribute news and generally tell people what you are up to. The success of Twitter users is generally measured in the amount of people that follow your updates.
You get information on your Twitter profile as to how many people follow you and you get notified when someone follows you. However, there is no notification when someone stops following you and you generally don’t have any insight into when people follow or leave you.
This is where the TweetEffect comes in – simply enter your twitter name and twittereffect will analyze your 200 latest updates and flag those up that made people follow or leave you.
effect of tweets on follow unfollow
How to use the TweetEffect
Using TweetEffect is easy as pie: simply enter your Twitter user name in the form above and hit the “tell me more” button. It might take a while to retrieve and analyze your data but soon you should know about the impact you had on the world.
All the Twitter updates that had an effect on your follower numbers will be displayed. Updates that made people leave are displayed in red, others in black.
TweetEffect Secret Algorithm:
To get the report in a graph format, type in the following web address in your browser
http://tweeteffect.com/?user=shrinagesh (substitute “shrinagesh” with your userid, ofcourse and see the result.
This tool might not be accurate to the core, but provides you with basic understanding on which tweets attract people and which repel them.
Twitter is a social networking site and we need to conform to social etiquette. I am not suggesting that you should walk on egg shells. I prefer to stay in twibernate (hibernate from twitter) if I am not in a mood to tweet. I know people can manage to survive without my tweets, lol
You can also try this command: http://tweeteffect.com/#random
BTW, you can follow the TwitterEffect developer on twitter @codepo8, follow me @ShriNagesh, if you are not following yet. DO you have a profile pic, short bio and few updates without links? if yes, then I will follow back.
What do you think about this tool? Is it useful? If so, how are you planning to use it?
Twitter Follow Suggestions – Twitter Adds New Suggested Users Feature
Twitter added a new feature suggesting users to follow.
Pros:
- The tool suggests nearly 20 users
- You can follow the suggested users on the same window
- Allows mass follow
- The suggestions change when page is refreshed, but some suggestions are repeated
Cons:
- Funny! there is no twitter id or link to the suggested users’ profile page. If you want to get more information about a user, you’ll have to use a different tool to locate. Now this is not handy.
- I didn’t understand if there was an algorithm to base suggestions on. Most of the results that ended for my account had nothing in common with my interests
The tool is rather rustic as of now. Hope it will be improved soon. Until then, I have my handy-dandy list of 30 alternatives to twitter search + 30 tools to find and manage followers on twitter.
I’d like to know your thoughts about the tool and How do you find people to follow on twitter?
Successful WordPress Blog Merger
Hi everyone, Welcome to Web2Mom.com (previously smartadvise.info). Atlast I ventured to merge both blogs. Web2Mom is pretty new and Smartadvise was started exactly one year ago. Originally started as a hobby, smartadvise gained popularity despite my infrequent updates and it was high time I dressed it in a better domain and get seriously working on it.
I hope you’ll welcome the domain name change. I value your opinion/feedback/comments/support.
Smiles,
Shri