But what if the feed does not update? … and we had a chance to experience this today as Feedburner feed would simply not sync, and not update. Here is what I did…

Feedburner Feeds Not Updating

1. Check original source feed –  has it updated? When you use caching plugins, there is a high chance your feed is cached and when pinged bots come by, they do not find an updated feed. Clear cache and confirm that the original feed has latest content.

2. Validate Feeds – check your feed with Feedvalidator to see for any RSS errors which prevent your feed from syncing correctly.

3. Ping Feedburner – use this form to ping your feed urls or site url (which should have feed autodiscovery links in the html), then your feed will be quickly updated (or it will point out feed errors). This did not fix our issue as well.

4. Resync Feedburner Feed - If your feed is valid, and even after pinging the feed does not update in an hour, then Feedburner recommends you go to the feed troubleshoot page (after logging into your feedburner account) and then you need to resync your feed and it will get updated instantly.

That worked and synced our feed with fresh content. Have you ever need to fix Feedburner feed issues?

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WP-Super Cache

However, since the release of the latest version, there were some buggy issues and we were unable to delete the cache. It was getting tedious to FTP inside the server and manually delete the cache. Then repeatedly reinstalling the plugin, some strange kind of 403 errors occured. It was time to try a new caching plugin…

Kindly note these are isolated issues affecting only our server and WP-Supercache is undoubtedly an excellent plugin, which is not only the most popular plugin, but also highly recommended.

WordPress Caching

A caching plugin is the single most important plugin to add to WordPress blogs, as it stores php pages as html files and minimizes server load. It will keep your site online even when the server is down, and will help your website survive unexpected traffic spikes even on shared hosting.

I wanted to use W3-Totalcache and combine it with a CDN service like MaxCDN (or Amazon Cloudfront which we already use to cache some static files), but since the plugin is so feature rich and so powerful, the controls and options in the plugin are too overwhelming. Meanwhile, the forums are filled with growing popularity of QuickCache. So I decided to give QuickCache a try…

Install Quick Cache

Firstly QuickCache works out of the box. Simply activate and turn on caching and you dont need to edit any setting unless you want to really customise caching options, which we didnt need, not will most other users. So basically it was simple to start and get working instantly.

At most you might want to increase the caching time from default 3600 (1 hour) to 36000 (10 hours) or higher if your content does not change too frequently. Also note that QuickCache does not cache pages for admin and known users by default, and also refreshes the pages after people post comments. So you need to actually logout to see it is working. Another good option is it will refresh only the single post after edits, and not the whole cache ( for which there is a quick clear cache button on top).

If you FTP inside the server, the files in the /cache folder are also stored differently. While Supercache used to replicate your entire site structure in the folder, Quick Cache stores them as MD5 hash files, which checks with your Salt in a complex interaction before serving cached files.

Quick Cache  Gzip Compression

Note that unlike Wp-Supercache, QuickCache has no option to enable gzip compression of your webpages. Gzip compression is a good idea as it helps to compress pages and deliver them to modern browsers, which helps to speed up you site load times and deliver a faster and better user experience.

Quickcache FAQ does suggest 2 ways to activate gzip compression manually. One is by editing your .htaccess file using mod_deflate, but that did not work for our site. The other alternative did work as Knownhost has installed zlib on our server. Simple create a blank notepad file, add zlib compression

zlib.output_compression = on

and save as php.ini and upload to your server root folder. It works and pages do get gzip compressed. Since it does not output ‘gzip on’ comment in the html code, you can test it using any HTTP compression test tool.

So basically we are very happy with QuickCache as of now and it is caching our WordPress blog error free and it is also highly recommended. Are you using Quick Cache and have some tips to share?

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What is Thin Content?

Simply put it is poor content, low quality content, few words of content which is classified as ‘low quality’ by search engines and fails to generate any significant search engine traffic. So basically it adds to the site bloat and reduces your link equity value. Note that low pageviews does not necessarily mean thin content, its possible the content is good, but not highly searched.

If you autogenerate or scrape content, it can lead to thousands of low quality web pages which get no traffic, so this thin content is what needs to be fixed or moved to different domain / subdomain to fix Google Panda penalty (e.g. we moved our job board to a different domain, as it synced data from a huge dataset).

How to Find  Thin Content?

Since our site was recently stuck by Google Panda update, we have witnessed very low traffic since then. This update especially affected sites with heavy ads above the fold, but then there are several reason Panda can strike. As we looked into the site archives, there indeed was lot of thin content which had accumulated over the years since 2004, when the site started.

So lets get started… Open up your Google Analytics statistics (Google Analytics is a must have site traffic tracking tool, and its free!). Go to Content > Site Content > Content Drilldown. Then choose to review traffic details of the last one year.

We use archives based on months in a path like /archives/year/month/,  we simply browse down to  Content Drilldown > Archives > Year > Month.

Now you can analyze in detail which articles are getting low traffic. Remember to sort by pageviews to get the data.

We tend to delete or unpublish all articles which have less than 10 pageviews in a year!

Depending on your site, you can instead choose 3-6 month data and decide on lower criteria like 5 pageviews. Either way you need to relook at all these pages and analyze why these pages are getting low traffic, fix the content, or move to drafts to fix later, or simply delete them. Since these articles never received any traffic over the year, removing them would not make a traffic drop anyway.

Remove Thin Content

Most articles affected with low traffic on our site were having large blockquoted text. The blogging styles were different in 2004-2007, and there was a tendency to repeatedly quote text from authoritative resources. After a threshold, this might have been viewed as copied / duplicate content from another site (especially since blockquotes are also linked back to the source).

Another important group was articles with broken links. Well WordPress has an excellent plugin to find broken links and nofollow them all in minutes! We are still working on removing broken links from our old archive pages, as over 10% links were broken!

We reviewed lots of old content month by month and  identified lots of low traffic content, removed quoted content, fixed articles which were useful, and yet deleted over 500 articles over the last week! … and plan to remove at least 200  more this week!

Warning: Remove content only if you clearly understand what you are doing. It might be a better idea to unpublish rather than delete posts, in case you need to restore content later. Many of these articles may have backlinks and may have had traffic further in the past, so if you created the content, you know what your past popular content was like nobody else. It is a good idea to edit / delete the content yourself, rather than outsourcing it to an intern.

Note: Low pageviews does not necessarily mean thin content, its possible the content is good, but not highly searched, and removing them can harm your site. So it is essential to check your content, identify why its ranking poorly, and if it is actually good original content, but with low searched terms and therefore low pageviews … keep it.  (Thanks @Sumesh)

It is essential for webmasters to find thin content today to fix Panda updates, or even better to prevent your site from getting penalized. Subscribe our blog as we continue to fight Google Panda and post tips that helped us.

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Highlight Tumblr Posts

I noticed a new option has appeared when you post a new article at the bottom right corner, titled “Highlight this post”. This gives you a choice of text across various categories and also allows you to choose from various logos (besides the default Bolt) and colors.

When you select the Highlight option and then click to publish, you get a popup credit card payment option or Paypal option which you can choose to pay $1. If you have a large number of Tumblr followers – this will make your highlighted post stand out above the clutter and drive extra site traffic your way for sure.  Check this out and share your experience.

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There a dozens of ways to get traffic to your site. Some of the methods include Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click, guest blogging, and solo ads, just to name a few. While paying for visitors can bring immediate rewards, it’s also possible to lose a ton of money while you’re learning the ropes. And when you’re just starting out, cash to invest in your online business might be in short supply.

One of my favorite traffic generation methods involves spending no money whatsoever. All it takes is a little sweat equity, and this is one of the best investments you can make in your business. I’m talking about Forum Marketing. I know, not glamorous and sexy, right? Well, keep reading to find out how to leverage the problems people are seeking answers to by hanging around forums in your niche.

Find The Right Target Audience

This is actually pretty easy using our old friend Google. Simply enter your niche and the word forums and you’ll turn up pages of potential marketing opportunities. Add a few keywords to narrow down your search and you can focus your efforts even further.

For instance, I entered “Tropical Fish Forums” to turn up dozens of potential places where I could check out what fishy people are talking about. But to narrow it a bit further I tried “Tropical Fish Beginner Forums” and found a whole different subset of forums that focus in on those who are just beginning to care for tropical fish. Those that may be seeking advice on how to get started, like the best size tank for their place, or the most economical filter, etc. Someone who may be looking to spend money on their new hobby. If that’s not an AH-HA moment, I don’t know what is!!

Getting Your Forum Feet Wet

It’s pretty easy to do this part. To get started you’ll just need to read through some of the forum posts to get idea of what kind of community you’re getting involved in. Spend some time and really read what people have written. This is the part where the sweat equity comes in. And to increase your chances of getting the free traffic flowing, you’ll need to be doing this same thing for perhaps 5 to 10 forums. So initially there’s a fair bit of “work” involved, but the rewards are so worth it.

Once you have a sense of the community it’s time to start contributing to the conversations taking place. You may actually have to sign up to be a member, so keep track of your username and password in a text file on your computer to prevent confusion and wasting time later on. Then pick some threads that appeal to you and offer opinions and advice. The idea here is to be super friendly and helpful without being pushy or pitching any products. Sales pitches will definitely get you banned from almost any forum. You need to establish yourself as a helpful voice and active member. Soon people will begin to recognize your username and rely on you to provide answers to their questions. This will help position you as an expert in the field.

The forum is a place where people come to converse with liked-minded folks and to find answers to their questions. You should be respectful at all times and avoid injecting your personal opinions on subjects other than what’s covered in the thread or forum you’re on. Absolutely no inflammatory posts should be made. Treat this as a great opportunity to get your name out there as an expert in your field, because word travels fast in these forums, and bad behavior will not be tolerated. On the other hand, if you prove yourself to be helpful and respectful, that news too will certainly get around.

Your Key To Success, Your Forum Signature

Blatant self-promotion is simply not allowed in any forum, period. So how in the world do you get people to visit your website or blog so you really show them what you can offer?

When you sign up for membership at the forum, you’ll probably be given the opportunity to create a profile telling other forum members a little about yourself. In this profile is where you have the chance to point people to your online real estate if they want to find out more about you.

If you do things right, people will begin to trust you and naturally want to find out more information about you. Your profile is your chance to gently point them in the right direction. Again, don’t be pushy. It’s a real turn off, and believe me, the word will get out.

Some forums allow a signature box, and you should be able to mention your website or blog here as well. Just remember to be subtle and you should be fine. People hate being sold to.

I’d like to mention just a few more important points about forum marketing:

• When seeking out forums, make sure the ones you’re considering are active and thriving. Too many forums have been abandoned or only have sporadic use, so be sure to check to see there are current posts and active users before you waste your time.
• Most forums have a FAQ section, and you may be able to get some useful information there.
• Look for LONG threads, the ones with many posts and active participation. These have many eyeballs viewing them every day.

Forum marketing can be a very lucrative source of free traffic. The visitors you get will be laser-focused. They will already know and are visiting your site because of the reputation you’ve built offering valuable and free information in the forums. This is the best kind of traffic you could ever ask for.

Guest Author Ted Begnoche is a writer, internet marketer, and owner of NetProfitPersuasion. His passion for generating traffic sometimes keeps him from sleeping at night.

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Facebook Timeline Movie Maker

First you need to activate Facebook Timeline, which is already rolling out to all Facebook users (and choose correct Facebook Cover Photos sizes).  Once you get started with Facebook timeline, then you will understand the new layout and features well.

The concept is interesting and since this app is official, you can grant access with more confidence. Once you click “Make Movie”, a popup alert asks for app access permissions, and then access to news feeds, and when you are done, it will create an amazing Timeline movie custom made for your Facebook account.

Unfortunately could not complete my Timeline movie as it requires at least 75 photos!

But here is a video of how your Facebook Timeline video could turn out like

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I have been using the amazing Broken Links Checker plugin for quite some time since Panda updates became famous and it has helped us find and fix all broken links on our website.

Check Broken Links

Few months back, the first time we used the plugin it took several hours as it scanned across our entire site and you could continue to refresh and see how many links were broken and how many were redirects. Since over last 7 years, this was the first time we checked broken links in such a comprehensive way, nearly 10% of outbound links were broken!

This was a huge exercise to fix all links in thousands of posts, but the interface integrates very well in the WordPress admin and easily allows you to Edit url, unlink text or mark the url not broken.

There are many options about to optimize as per your schedule, with many other custom options. But as I continued to fix these urls, I realized it would take many weeks to fix up the entire site. The plugin meanwhile also offered a quick and powerful way to nofollow all such links and even add a CSS strikethrough on all broken links so visitors would not click through these broken 404 links.

This is a highly recommended plugin for all WordPress bloggers. Broken links are very bad for SEO and this is a very powerful tool to fix all broken urls in few clicks. Try it out and tell us how many broken urls did you find on your WordPress blog?

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Google Page Layout Update

We had only one 336×280 ad unit aligned right and only one 160x90px adlink unit aligned left above the main content. There are few 125×125 buysellads banners in the sidebar. Ironically the same day Google Adsense sent an email that we should place upto 3 Adsense ad units to monetize more. High ad to content sites were earlier penalized by the Google Panda update and reducing ads was a suggested measure for Panda recovery.

What seemed to be the problem was the 2 navigation bars on top pushing content lower and there were ads placed high. So it seemed likely that there was low content to ad ratio above the fold. Now the site traffic is down badly by 50%.

Page Layout Changes

Some changes I quickly did to fix the site layout were as follows-

1. Navigation bars were removed from all pages (except the homepage), as this will help to push the content upwards and expose more content above the fold
2. The content area width was widened to allow more content to rise above the fold.
3. Breadcrumbs were made smaller and their high navigation was significantly narrowed
4. Reduced the size of the large rectangle from 336x280px to 300x250px and continued to retain it right aligned. That still retains the single Adsense unit.
5. Removed the 160px wide ad link unit, so that removes the sole ad link unit.
6. Pushed down the Buysellads in the sidebar, from the middle right position to a much lower position. This brings it below the fold mostly and now we need to reduce the ad pricing significantly. We also plan to reduce the number of 125×125 ads from max 4 to 2 in number soon.
7. Used the browser size tool to ensure there was only 1 ad visibile on majority of our pages for maximum users
8. We also removed the excellent related posts widget by Outbrain, the amazing Sharebar plugin, several other sidebar plugins and scripts to reduce confusion with ad scripts, which in turn made site faster and reduced page load time significantly
9. Removed repeated several links for popular posts etc, which might be interpreted wrongly as duplicate content.

Site Traffic Recovery?

Now as mentioned in the Google article, sites affected by page layout algo will be fixed when Googlebot recrawls affected sites, which should restore the search engine rankings, and it might take weeks. But reports are coming in that this was the Google Panda 3.2 update, which might suggest need to fix some other issues and may complicate traffic recovery.

The good part about the strong QOT community is that despite the search engine traffic drop, we will continue to publish great content and every new QOT article will continue to reach 25000 RSS readers, 8700 Facebook fans, 3900 Twitter fans and 1900 Google+ followers.

It has been a learning experience and indeed the site loads much faster, has much lesser ads, much cleaner design and definitely a better user experience… which Google aims for. Please see if any of these issues affect your site and fix them as soon as possible.

Any advice from the readers which might help site traffic recover is most welcome.

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Page Layout Google Update

The earlier Google Panda update was said to significantly affect Google search engine rankings for websites with high ad to content ratio. This saw many webmasters reduce the  number of ads, remove low quality thin content and generate a high content-ad ratio. What this new Google update does is target sites where large ads dominate above the fold area, which has high visibility, needs no scrolling  and therefore has a high click rate for ads.

This leads to poor user experience, since users are hit with so many ads, and cannot find the content, which is pushed down by the ads. Current Google updates aim to reduce the ads above the fold so that users clicking through search results get exposed to … in Google’s own words “ lot of visible content above-the-fold “ and not just ads.

Since ads above the fold get higher CTR, webmasters do prefer to place ads there, and Google will not affect such sites. Only when the ads are excessive and the content is difficult to find, such sites will be affected.

Is Your Site Ad-Heavy

Google suggests you use Browser Size tool or many other tools to test your website in different screen resolutions and see how your site space is used and how ads dominate your site. I used the browser site tool and it looks like this

Interpretation – 90% contour means that 90% of people visiting Google have their browser window open to at least this size or larger. If your site is center aligned, its a good idea to resize the browser window to test the tool or you will get a wrong result. One more thing to note is that these are client area sizes, not browser window sizes (so they are without the title bar, toolbars, status bars), which means the screen area visible will actually be smaller.

Test the tool with your site and you will realize that ads actually do occupy a large screen space which is all that is seen by a large percentage of people browsing with low screen resolutions

Is your site traffic down?

Its time to relook you ads placement and remove large ad blocks that over power your prime screen area. If your site traffic is indeed hit badly, do the site design changes and wait for Googlebot to recrawl and restore your traffic, which could take weeks… Google is watching … dont let your site get penalized.

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No  Adsense Ads

When I found the issue, I was surprised and at first it stuck me that its possible the ads were disabled. Then quickly checked my email for any Adsense warnings for policy violation etc., but there were none. I though it might be a browser issue, cleared the cache, then checked my site in other browsers – no ads. Then I checked the site in my Android mobile phone browser and still no ads.

Then I tried to see if the code was properly inserted, as sometimes you can break the code if you use WYSIWYG html editors. But the code was inserted properly. Then I went searching for possible causes for non displaying Adsense ads, and Adsense Help provides some answers like

1. JavaScript disabled in your browser
2. Personal firewall software with ad blocking / other ad blocking software
3. Disapproved site
4. Pages with potentially adult or mature content
5. Adsense policy violation
6. Account risk to advertisers or generating invalid clicks
7. Too many ad units on your site

But we always take care to strictly adhere to Adsense policies as it is an important advertising  revenue source for this site.  When I checked the Adsense account, the earnings were not zero, in fact Adsense Search was generating clicks and income. Indeed the Adsense ads were displaying on the site, and Adsense for Search was actually showing ads.

Then I posted to Twitter and checked the forums and realized many people are affected and a member roycerus says they have “verbal confirmation from Adsense directly” and this is an “Adsense bug which is being corrected [no eta for a fix yet] and many sites have been affected”.  Even the Adsense forum is full of such complaints and requests.

What is strange is that Google Adsense has not put up any blog post or update informing Adsense publishers of this Adsense bug as many webmasters and bloggers panic for fear as that their Adsense account may be disabled. It will also be interesting if Google Adsense team plans to reimburse publishers for the revenue loss, as some big publishers are losing thousands of dollars every hour!

Is you site affected? Do you see Adsense ads on your sites?

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