Some good advice about how to make your conent easy to read

Finding it hard to locate your Wordpress API Key?  We’ve all been there, if you’re one of those frustrated people that simply can’t find it and you’ve landed here, you’re in luck.  Here is how you can find it:

• Go to your home page at  Wordpress.com
• look in the top left hand corner and you will see a tab called “My Account”
• Roll your mouse over it and you will see a list appear, click onto “Global Dahboard”
• On the left hand side you will see some tabs, click “Profile”
• On the top of the page you will see your API Key

Now you can relax

I fell upon this feature that I, in my ignorance , did not know Feedburner had so I thought I would share it with you too.

It is always nice to leave a thank you message, I always like receiving them as it gives that extra touch for any online relationship.  It seems that Feedburner has had this feature for a while…. and I had no idea:

To leave a personal message to the person who has subscribed to your blog, simply log onto your Feedburner accound, click on the Optimize tab, take a peek at the Services section on left and under that, click the  BrowserFriendly link and you should see something like this appear on your page:  (well, sort of)

Simply fill in your thank you message and save; your subscribers will now get that great persoanl touch

Easy…

If you are anything like me you will be deeply in love with Firefox, its clean, has great themes, easy to use, quick and has fantastic add-ons.  It seems a long time ago now that IE was the big kid in the school yard, things have moved on since those days and now savvy surfers don’t even give it a second thought.

I have just added some plugins to Firefox 3 and I must say, they’re fab, but here are my top 3 Firefox Add-ons of 2009:

Shareaholic

This is one add-on that I love too much and I wonder how manged to get by without it.  If you use multiple social media networks and love to bookmark and share content then this is one add-on you cannot miss out on.  By simply clicking the icon on your toolbar you can share your content on a wide selection of sites such as Twitter, Digg, Facebook and Gmail. Download

Feedly

As a avid user of Google Reader I was really please to fall upon this great add-on from Firefox.  It pulls all of your feeds form Google Reader, places them in your catagories in a really eye catching, user friendly platform that also intergrates your Twitter, YouTube, Delicious and Friendfeed accounts.  You can share content with absolute ease on your other networks, its just great.  Download

Prayer times

This add-on is a couple of years old but for those who don’t know, this is a simple  and extremely useful add-on that calculates your location and displays the prayer times according to your school of jurisprudence.  When you are sat in front of your computer at work and at home it is easy to get distracted, this add-on is a perfect reminder.  It will always be one of my favourites, whatever year. Download

There are many tools on the Internet that you can use to check your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) performance. I would like to touch upon some of them, inshallah.

www.marketleap.com

Marketleap.com offers lots of advice on SEO and online search marketing and I would advise everyone to take some time to explore the site and read the information given there. It’s really worthwhile. They also provide free yet powerful and useful tools that you can use to check your search engine performance. One of them is the Link Popularity tool.

In one of my posts, I explained the importance of the Link Popularity and its effect on your search engine ranking.  I also advised that you increase your inbound links (links to your website from other websites).  So imagine you have requested the inbound links and the website owners agreed to add them or probably told you that they did so.  How do you check whether they added you or not?  It’s time to use the Link Popularity tool!  Just follow this simple steps:

1. Click on the  Link Poplularity link on Marketplace.com (you can find it on the bottom of the page) or here is the direct link to that tool: http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/ .
2. Enter your URL and if  you like three other websites to compare (maybe your competitors’ websites?) and click on Generate Report button.
3. Be a little bit patient and enjoy the results.

What’s good about this tool is that not only can you see how many websites link to you but also what those websites are.

www.linkpopularity.com

This is another but quite straightforward tool to use. Just enter your website URL and it will show the results for three major search engines: Google, MSN and Yahoo.  Please note that the results vary from one search engine to another.

I hope you found this article useful and if you have any comments, please share them with us, inshallah.

Jazakallakhu khairan.

When an Internet user is unable, or unwilling, to guess your website address they will use a search engine to find you. Now, of all the website visits conducted in the UK and US that were immediately preceded by a search engine search, Google is responsible for the majority. Google is by far the most widely used search engine and the biggest referrer of visitors in the UK (70% of all searches) and the US (60% of all searches).

Google, like Hoover, has achieved a dominance so great, in such a short period of time, that the company name is often used to mean Internet searching. Single execs, looking for companionship, ‘google’ potential dates before committing to a meal. Parents google a school to decide whether it’s suitable for their kids’ education. Job applicants google the interview staff to learn any interesting snippets that they can bring up at interview (and vice versa). Internet users use Google – a lot. Google, certainly at the moment, owns the Internet.

A lot of companies want the same thing – good exposure on Google. But there is no magic switch, there is no instant cure; becoming good fellows with Google takes time; you want instant gratification and Google’s more interested in pursuing a long-term relationship with you. Commit seriously to Google and it will commit right back, and when that relationship is forged, it’s not just strong, it’s really strong.

The material taken from “Get into bed with Google” book by J. Smith

You’ve got a website for your business and it’s a big achievement. But it doesn’t stop there. Now you need to drive the traffic into your website by promoting it on different places, mainly on the Internet. Today we will look at some free places to promote your Website online without spending a single penny. So let’s get started:

Free Web Directories

Some people or even Google have placed less emphasis on web directories as a linking tactic but  they are a good place to start with and I would still recommend them to everyone.

• DMOZ
• Librarians Internet Index
• Illumirate
• Info Listings
• Web World Index
• Skype Media
• more…

Start a Blog

A blog improves your website link popularity and can drive huge traffic into your website. Once you set up your blog, you can submit your blog in 100’s of blog directories and other places that are dedicated just for blogs. There are countless benefits of running your own blog. Inshallah, I will dedicate a series of posts regarding this topic some other time.

If you currently don’t have a blog, here are the websites of some of the major blog providers (please note that the sites below do not require hosting and most importantly – are FREE!):

• Blogger
• Wordpress
• Livejournal
• Windows Live Space

Once you have set up your blog and added quite a few posts there, Top Rank’s Online marketing Blog publishes a great up to date list of Blog Directories you can submit to.

I hope you’ve found this post helpful! Any comments? Please share with us.

What Is a Favicon?

A favicon (short for favorites icon and pronounced fav-eye-con), also known as a page icon, an urlicon, website icon, shortcut icon or bookmark icon is a 16×16 pixel square icon (image) associated with a particular website or webpage.  You can see the Favicons nearly on all professionally developed websites.

Favicon is displayed on the Address line bar and/or in the Favorites menu of many main browsers such as Firefox and Internet Explorer.

This is achieved  by placing a little image file called favicon.ico in the root directory of a web site.  Usually the logo or look and feel of the web site is used as a Favicon.

Why would I want Favicon on my website?

One of the main objectives of using favicon is  to build the “brand” awareness of the website. Just like other products, if the name of the product is attached to some kind of creative symbol or logo, the product will be easily recognized by the consumers or customers.

The favicon also contributes to the “uniqueness” of the website.  With your unique Favicon you can really stand out from any other websites and create a more customized appearance within your visitors browsers.

OK, Fine. Now How Can I get my Favicon done then?

There are many free Favicon Generators on the Internet.  Just try typing “free favicon generator” on Google and you will be given thousands of  results to go through.

However, if you want to save your time and get your favicon done by a professional,  then please contact us on info @ ummah-design.com and we will be happy to help you inshallah.

Examples of your work?

Here is the list of some of our Favicon work done recently:

Assalamu alaykum,

This is the continuation of my previous post where I discussed Link Popularity as one of the new ways of  ranking websites that Google introduced a few years ago.

Google also introduced another idea which was called Page Rank where not all links were treated equal. For example, if I had 1 link from BBC’s website whose page rank is 8 and your site had 1 link from a blog whose page rank is 3, my website would have had a higher ranking because it had a link from a more reputable website which had a higher Page Rank on the Internet.  The website with a Page Rank of 2 is 8 times more powerful than a website with a Page Rank of 1. Therefore it is very important  to have popular and high Page Ranked websites linked to your website.

You can download the Google Toolbar that shows the Page Rank of any website you visit or alternatively, there are many online tools that can do it for you, for example, try this Google Page Rank Checker.

That’s that for today.  In Part III inshallah, I will touch upon Link Reputation, so please visit us again.

Assalamu alaykum everyone,

I thought it would be beneficial if I shared this with you. This is an extract from the book “Presenting to Win” I recently mentioned on one of my recent posts. I did so many presentations myself and most probably fell prey to one of those mistakes.

Here is the extract:

The vast majority of presentations fall prey to what I call the Five Cardinal Sins:

• No clear point. The audience leaves the presentation wondering what it was all about. How many times have you sat all the way through a presentation and, at the end, said to yourself, “What was the point?”

• No audience benefit. The presentation fails to show how the audience can benefit from the information presented. How many times have you sat through a presentation and repeatedly said to yourself, “So what?”

• No clear flow. The sequence of ideas is so confusing that it leaves the audience behind, unable to follow. How many times have you sat through a presentation and, at some point, said to yourself, “Wait a minute! How did the presenter get there?”

• Too detailed. So many facts are presented, including facts that are overly technical or irrelevant, that the main point is obscured. How many times have you sat in on a presentation and, at some point, said to yourself, “What does that mean?”

• Too long. The audience loses focus and gets bored before the presentation ends. How many times in your entire professional career have you ever heard a presentation that was too short?

When presenters commit any of these sins, they are wasting the time, energy, and attention of their audience. What’s more, they are thwarting their own objectives.

Each of these Five Sins is quite separate and distinct from the others.

Here’s an analogy to illustrate:

Suppose you and I were chatting, and I said, “Let me tell you about what I had for dinner last night.” My presentation would have a point, wouldn’t it? You’d know what I intended to do, and I wouldn’t be committing the first sin.

But why on earth should you care about what I had for dinner last night? Unless you had said, “Jerry, I’m bored with all the restaurants
in the area. Can you recommend a new place?” Then, by telling you about the excellent meal I had at a hot new bistro last night, I would be providing a benefit to you, and I’d avoid the second sin.

Now, if I told you about my fine meal by starting with the dessert, then I went back to the salad, then jumped forward to the cheese course, then back to the main course, my story would have no flow. If instead I went from soup
to nuts, it would have a clear and orderly path, and I’d eliminate the third sin.

If I described the courses I ate by using the phylum, class, order, genus, and species of every animal and vegetable product in the dinner, it would be far too technical and too detailed. If instead I confined my description to descriptive adjectives and simple nouns, I would avoid the fourth sin.

Finally, if I took four hours to tell you about a meal that took me only two hours to consume, my presentation would be too long. If instead I did it in five minutes, I’d escape the fifth sin.

I hope you wouldn’t commit any of these “sins” while doing your presentation anymore, inshallah.