Let me rant a little bit with my post today.

What will you do if you woke up one morning and you can’t access your blog?

You’ve tried other browser, still your site is inaccessible…

You’ve tried other internet connection, same problem…

You’ve asked your colleagues, same result as yours…

You’ve tried to change the DNS of your modem, still no reply…

You ping, and the reply is “unknown host”…

Multiply this with 4 blogs and what do you think are you gonna feel?

I’m sure most of you will get mad already.

This was exactly what I’d experienced last Thursday. 4 0f the numerous blogs and websites that I’m managing went into oblivion.

I sent an email to the technical support of the web host provider where these 4 blogs are hosted and guess what?…

They replied after 11 hours! Wow, that was  too fast wasn’t? Do you think that’s a reasonable time to reply to an urgent and critical technical support?

I thought that they are monitoring their servers 24×7? Why is it that I need to ask them what happened before  telling me the real issues? Isn’t they supposed to be more active in reporting this kind of incidence to their clients?

I’m working as an I.T. consultant managing webhost servers too and we have a policy in our company that we need to send an incident report to all our clients whenever there’s a critical network outages.  Aside from this, we are also required to send a report every 30 minutes to lessen the anxiety of our clients.

I’m not expecting the same treatment from this webhost provider but I hope that they’ll be more pro-active in dealing with their clients.

The  Worst is Yet to Come

Not only that  their technical support is horrible but also on how they managed their web host servers. When I received their email, I was expecting that perhaps the problem is just a simple DNS problem but I was alarmed when they told me that there was a hard disk failure.

Hard disk failure??? How could it be? I know that webhost hardware are using server grade hard disk, meaning they are configured to recover itself from this kind of failure. This kind of hardware are supposed to be using multiple hard disks. The minimum hard disk for this kind of setup is 2. If one of the two drives should fail, the other will still be available to run applications or recover files.

I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt but their excuse is really lame.  This is really unbelievable.

Additionally, they told me their weekly backup was corrupted and they can’t put back all the files,  although they gave an assurance that they’re doing their best to restore all files as much as they could.

The Resolution

They’ve sent my account information but telling me nothing on what should I do with this information.  After sending them numerous support tickets, finally they replied that I need to setup all my domains again and start from scratch because their previous backup for the month of June were all gone! I have to setup domains on WHM, make Packages, upload all files, install wordpress, themes, plugins etc..

Can you believe that? Remember, they’ve mentioned on their first email that only a week time of backup was corrupted? Now here it is, they’re saying  the whole previous month is corrupted too.

The only consolation that they gave me is they won’t bill me for one month. Thanks but no thanks. Don’t know they that my clients lost more than the cost of the free one month they are offering? The lost of traffic, lost of income opportunities such as payperpost, adsense, affiliates and more.

Sadly, one of my clients whom I have been working with since 2007 transferred to another host.

Signs You Have a Bad Webhost

Based on my experienced, here are the signs you have a bad webhost and you’ve better think twice to RUN or stay with them if you see these hints.

1. No 24×7 customer support. Your online presence is not only limited within your time zone, and if something goes wrong, you need to get it back up no matter what time day or night it is.

2. Poor or lack of  support. You pay them good money and it’s just appropriate that they will treat you like an important customer but if you’ve noticed that only 1 person is answering your support tickets then it means that they are understaffed.

3. Hard to get in touch with their customer support service. This is almost synonymous with no.2, but if the webhost provider isn’t returning your phone calls or emails then be careful and stay away from them.

4. Your site or blog is down on a frequent basis. As I’ve mentioned on no.1, your site or blog must be running  not only on a 24×7 basis but it should be up also for at least 99% all the time. This is what the webhost providers are offering. You need to find a provider that can guarantee you a 99% uptime or more.

I had almost one week of sleepless night trying to recover all  4 blogs of my clients. Some have backups on their local PC but not updated. It’s been a week also the live chat support of this webhost provider that I’m using is offline. How can it be “live” when it’s off?

Sorry for this post but I hope you will learn a lesson or two on my experienced. It has a big impact on my clients (financially – lost of income opportunities, etc.) and to me  as well.  I lost one big client, and it affected my emotional  and physical health too.   I was not able to ride my bike and play badminton for almost a week since I’ve spent  sleepless nights to make the 4 blogs work again.

I hope dear readers this won’t happen to you. I tell you, it’s costly. So go, find the best and most reliable webhost provider you can afford.

If you have noticed, I’m a bit obsessed with driving web traffic  and how to get more quality links in some of my previous posts.  Today, I’ll be posting another subject on the same direction.

Let’s face it, your blog or website will not make any money if nobody pay attention to it. Simply means, no traffic=no money.

If you use Google in searching for something, for example the words “world cup 2010″ , you will notice that YouTube videos are always on top of SERP (Search Engine Rank Page).

Example of a Google search result with YouTube

This is not really unusual because Google owned YouTube.

What’s so exciting about this feature of Google search engine, is that YouTube is one of the greatest source of traffic of most websites now than ever! This is how the term “viral videos”  was invented. A lot of internet marketers are using this great tool to bring massive traffic to their site.

YouTube is a great way to market your blog or your website, but just like a well written article, you  need to have a  video that draws attention. After this you need to create more views that  will create the link and the position in  the search engine, and therefore the traffic.

How do you create more  YouTube views?

1. Don’t make your video  appear like an Ad. – viewers don’t usually share this kind of videos unless it really amazing. If it’s an Ad for the television, just upload on YouTube on how it was done. I’ve seen a lot of  ” the making of…” videos in YouTube that are so popular.

2. Try to make convincing(but not misleading) titles to your videos. Secret tip: I’ve seen a lot of fake videos title and hey…they have a lot of viewers.

3. Share, share and share. Take advantage of Facebook, MySpace, Forums and other social networks.

4.Try YouTube’s promoted videos feature. YouTube Promoted Videos (ads.youtube.com) is available for users in the USA only and for those Non-USA users, use Google AdWords to create a Promoted Videos ad.

5. Use a third party marketing firm. Try Increaseyoutubeviews.com. Buy YouTube views and let this company do all the hardwork to Increase Youtube Views.

What’s so special with Increaseyoutubeviews.com?  A lot actually. Let me just summarize it in few words. This company will, and can definitely get you on the most viewed list, and make your video go viral!  When it comes to YouTube Video Promotion, just go to Increaseyoutubeviews.com and you’ll be in the perfect place.

If you want to be more popular, you need something to get people interested  in your YouTube videos. Social networks and word of mouth will make you popular over time and so other third party marketing firm whose specialty is making your video viral.

YouTube got a lot of potential to make money, use it to your advantage.

If you are not aware, according to some webmasters, Google had a PageRank update last month of June and they are “predicting” the next update could be on September.  Historically, it has been observed that Google updates its PageRank every three months.

Are you ready for the next Google PageRank update?

Do you want your site to improve its rank?

Do you want to increase the current PageRank of your blog?

It’s just past four days of the month of July. You still have  more or less 90 days to improve or gain Google PageRank. Now is the right time to do it!

How can you increase the PageRank of your site in 3 months the fastest way possible?

Before I introduce you the fastest way (automatic), let me tell you first the 4 Easy Steps on How To Get Quality Back-links for your blog.

1. Look for blogs that provide “do follow”. Only “do follow” blogs will give you the Google PageRank juice.  There’s a lot of them out there. Of course, BlogDeManila is a DoFollow since 2008.

Most DoFollow blogs are using a badge like this

You can actually locate blogs that allow back-links(dofollow) by using the  free Firefox plugin available from SEO Quake. You can download it  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collection/seo-tools

2. If you want to get PR (Page Rank), start making sensible comment on DoFollow blogs. “Drive by” comments are not effective. Make an insightful, useful or relevant comment to the post that is likely to be approved by the blog’s administrator.

3. Instead of using your name (or your blog’s name),  you can use  relevant anchor text on the blog to include your back-link with. For example if you want to rank on “Car Accessories”, you may use it like this:

Sample on using Relevant Anchor Text (Keywords)

You can include your back-link within the website URL on your post and  actual comment box as well, just make sure it’s permitted.

4. The last is easy. Rinse and Repeat 1-3 steps.

The process that I’ve told you is simply similar to manual link exchange.  The only drawback of this process is -  it is extremely time consuming. You need to do a lot of commenting (and manual link exchange) for you to gain quality PR.  I’m not saying that it doesn’t work. It does!  In fact, it still being use by a lot of bloggers.

Semi-Automatic BackLinks Strategy

With the usage of what is known as Web 2.0 technology, acquiring back-links is easier now than in any time in the history of the internet. Many blogger build back-links for their site using Social Bookmarking websites. All you have to do is  often sign in and create profiles. Still, you need to manually add your link to all the social bookmarking sites.

What we need is a fully automated process that will auto-link our site to other high-quality pages.

Fully Automatic BackLinks

Here’s where the fun of of backlinking comes in.

Do you want your links be automatically placed on up to hundreds of sites simply by displaying links on your own page?

If your reply is no, then just contain yourself in manually building your links but if your answer is a BIG sounding YES, then head on to AUTOMATIC BANKLINKS.

But before you do that, let me give you some background about this new service that is set to revolutionize the concept of link exchanging for web masters and bloggers.

What is Automatic BankLinks?

I’ll sum it up for you. It is a  FREE service that enables webmasters and website owners to quickly and effortlessly build up good quality, relevant backlinks, by agreeing to display a small amount of links to other user’s sites on their own pages.

You can actually see a real-time sample on my page. Just look for the FREE Backlinks section after the Top Commentators widget.

Three of the most common questions  (based on their site) that you may want to ask them also:

• Isn’t Automatic Backlinks just another link exchange directory?
  Not exactly. Most link directories work on the principal of having a single “Links” page, that is populated with links that are vaguely related to your site’s topic. Automatic Backlinks places links on already existing content pages that have a minimum of Google PageRank 1.
• Are the links reciprocal?
  No. It is widely believed that search engines place less weight on simple “you link to me – I link to you” exchanges. Automatic Backlinks uses sophisticated algorithms to create one-way links between the pages and sites in the system.
• How can I be sure of the quality of the backlinks I get?
  Automatic Backlinks only includes pages that have earned a Google PageRank of 1 or above in to the system.

I have given you the two ways on how to improve your PageRank. The ball is in your hand. You can choose either the manual way (time consuming) or the fully automatic “set and forget” system – the Automatic BankLinks.

It’s your choice on how do you want to boost your search engine ranking. Let me know what way do you want to take.

Major Search Engines

You may have the best website ever created. Your content is superb with correct keywords on the right places.

The question is, how do you attract traffic to your site?

Face the fact, getting a good inbound links are very important  if you want to get high search engine rankings.

The question is, what exactly are good inbound links?

Face the fact,  the more organic links you obtain from relevant websites or niches, the better your site will rank on search engine results.

Search engines like Google, Yahoo, Ask, Bing and other search engines rank websites according to how many quality backlinks they can find pointing  back to your site. Let me reiterate this,  quality is determined by how relevant the other site is to your site.

The question is, how to find the OTHER good sites that are relevant to yours.

There’s an old saying, “Build it and they will come” is no longer true in a virtual world. You’ve got to find, run after, chase and if needed beg for other sites to link to your site.

There are various methods that are effective in a getting quality back links  like submitting to a directory, article writing, participate and be active on online forums, blog commenting, social bookmarking and press releases, among others.

Sure, you can do all these methods by yourself manually. You can do this  at no cost whatsoever too. Remember, getting quality and good back links are on-going process if you want to maintain your ranking. I’m just afraid that you might lose your energy in actively seeking back links year after year.

This is where you need the help of professional firms that are offering this kind of services.It’s actually easy to find companies that are offering SEO services. Do a  Google search for “SEO firm” and you will find a lot of them

The question is, are they really useful? Will they deliver their promises  ?

Most of these firm will promise you heaven and earth. A lot of them are ensuring that your site will be listed on major search engines and land on top 10!

One firm in particular is SubmitEdge which is listed no. 5 on Google search engine result page for the “SEO firm” keywords. They have what they call “Guaranteed Google Indexing” service. It stated on their website that they make sure that your site gets indexed in 10 days or they will give you a full refund. Wow, what a statement.

Isn’t only Google engineers can guarantee top ranking?

For  a company like SubmitEdge that belongs to Top 10 on Google’s first result page , perhaps they are right. They know the nitty-gritty and methodologies on how to make your site visible on the first page of any search engine.

It took BlogDeManila .com more than a month to be indexed on Google and two months to get a page rank of 2.  This is the reason I want to know the techniques of these SEO firms are using. Are they for real? Are their methods legitimate or are they using black hat techniques?

Do not delete SPAM…yet.

What I’m talking about?

This may sound stupid but you’ve got to submit the spam to the web before hitting the “delete” or “delete all” button on your WordPress Comment Page dashboard.

Well, this post of mine applies only to all who are using Akismet on their site, either a blog or a corporate site.

I believe Akismet is the most useful plug-in/API ever developed for a blog. This is also the reason why it’s a default plug-in of WordPress, aside from the well known fact that the man behind Akismet is also the main developer of WordPress.

If you are a big fan of WordPress, you are using your Askimet, are you?  If not, then you are missing the most important tool for your blogging battle.

What is Akismet?

In a very straight and simple definition – Akismet was developed to kill Spam.

That’s it. No more no less.

Some people call it ” The Silence of the Spams“. It kills spam in the background automatically without intruding your blog life.

So why did I tell you not to delete Spam? Because you have to inform Akismet that you’ve got a spam on your Comment Pending Page. Akismet cannot kill it unless you or other Akismet users had already submitted the ‘specimen’ of the spam.

This is how Akismet works. When a new comment comes to your site it is submitted to the Akismet web service which will test the comment if its a friendly comment or just a plain spam. This includes  trackback, or pingback too.

Look at BlogDeManila Comment Page. Some comments look genuine but if you check the sites of those submitted URL, you will know that they are just purely Stupid-Pathetic-Annoying-Message or SPAM.

BlogDeManila Comment Page

If you see this really annoying comments or pingbacks, just mark them as “SPAM” to inform Akismet web service. Do not click on trash …yet.

Once you marked them as negative comment, they will be transferred to your Comment Spam Page. From here you can delete them permanently or let Akismet do it automatically.  Make sure that you’ve chosen the option to automatically discard (or delete) spam comments on posts older than a month.

Akismet Option to Delete Spam Automatically

Akismet becomes more effective and intelligent the more you use it. So use it freely!

Is Akismet FREE?

Yes and No. Akismet is free for personal use and non-profit organization and educational institution. BUT, yes there’s a big but here, according to Automaticc ( the maker of Akismet), if your blog is earning more than $500 a month, then are you are encouraged to get a $5/mo pro-blogger Akismet API key.

If you are running a commercial venture in your blog or corporate site, then you must get an enterprise subscription  for your company starting at $50/mo. The last thing that you want to see in your corporate  blog  are good old-fashioned pill, porn and Viagra ad comments, right?

You have a lot of better things to do than fight dozen and dozens of  ever-changing, high-tech spam aliens.

Don’t forget your best, automatic laser gun is already in your arsenal. All you have to do is  is activate, configure and use it. Forget that spam was ever a problem again. Hasta la vista, spam baby!

Let me first state this, “page speed is important factor up to a certain point”.  This is to clear up some issues that I’ve written on my previous post. Still, just to reiterate, Google started to incorporate the loading of your site on as one of the basis in search ranking. So I encourage you to start looking at your blog or website’s loading speeding.

Why Page Speed is Important?

Quick loading site can make your online  presence better than the competition’s.  Who wants a website that is lagging behind anyway? Most websites are losing bucket loads of visitors because they can’t see the information they are looking right away. People want fast access to data. Between two similar pages with almost the same content, I assure you that an internet user will flock to the pages that load faster.

To be honest, I personally feel irritated when blog sites are slow loading.

So I think,  page speed is important not only it’s now one of Google’s signal in search ranking system but it boils down to making your visitors happy. Yes, it’s simple as that. Page speed improves how users perceive your site.

I already gave 7 tips on how to optimize your blog/site speed on my previous post. Go on, read my previous post if you haven’t done it.

Availability of  your Site

Availability affect the speed of your  blog/site pages . This is where choosing and using the right web hosting provider is a factor to consider.  Looking for the best web host is not an easy task. There are many things you have to consider even for something that looks simple. There are so many web hosts out there who will promise you earth shattering hosting packages such as giving you the cheapest price. But remember, choosing the expensive one is by no means the best either.

Choosing the best web hosting provider available to serve your needs is  a tiresome and grueling process. My ultimate recommendations are:

1. Ask your colleagues. Ask your fellow bloggers and/or webmaster who are in the industry for some time already. They are the best resources on where to find the best web hosting provider.
2. Check  out web hosting directory sites and read  the reviews.  You can read the recommendation and testimonials of different clients that are using their services already.

Note that there are web hosting rating sites that are biased on their reviews but there are neutral review sites that do exist as well.

When looking for a host make sure to look for the dependability, sound customer support systems in place and the one that can provide the speed.

It’s Official.We all need Speed…for our blogs in order to rank high on Google’s search page.

Google announced on April 09,2010 that they incorporated site speed as one of the over 200 signals in determining the position of a website in the search results.

According to Google Webmaster Central blog, they launched this change a few weeks back after rigorous testing and not too many people noticed it.

Google’s Matt Cutts says that the change will affect only a few percentage of websites:

“Fewer than 1% of search queries will change as a result of incorporating site speed into our ranking. That means that even fewer search results are affected, since the average search query is returning 10 or so search results on each page.

So please don’t worry that the effect of this change will be huge. In fact, I believe the official blog post mentioned that ‘We launched this change a few weeks back after rigorous testing.’

The fact that not too many people noticed the change is another reason not to stress out disproportionately over this change.”

7 Tips to better optimize your blog and keep it listed in Google search results.

There are a number of articles on the internet on best practices for improving your website’s load and response times. Below are just some of the proven tips that you can easily apply to improve the speed of your blog.

1. Use Google Page Speed tool to speed up your site. You can use Page Speed to evaluate the performance of your blog pages and to get suggestions on how to improve them.
2. Choose a fast and reliable web host with a good connection to the Internet. Slow servers can cause problems.
3. Use as few images and videos as possible on your blog .
4. Make sure that all images have height and width tags.  The tags will make sure that the browser knows the size of the image before loading it.
5. Use media content provider such as Flicker and YouTube to host your media images and videos instead of loading them on your webhost.
6. Use only the plugins you really need, and delete the rest.
7. Delete unnecessary PHP tags and database access.  Convert some PHP commands to HTML.

Blog reader wants immediate results. Most Internet users will just skip a site altogether if it fails to load within a couple of seconds. Even if, they are just dropping your EC button or clicking on your Adgitize widget. The faster your  blog pages load, the more readers of your blog will be.

If you need more explanation on how to apply these tips, I’ll be happy to elaborate them one by one. Just make sure to wear your seat belt when applying these tips

With hundreds of web hosting companies offering all kinds of hosting plans, it has become challenging to find the best web host company that offers balance between  features, performance and support.

What about Prices? Well, this is relative in one way or the other. Some web host provider will offer you a “cheap” entry for as low as $1 only for your first month but you have to sign-up with them for at least 2 years in order for you to avail of that special price. Other providers, on the other hand, can give you a special prices which are valid for a limited time.

So what is the best web host provider for blogs? For me, no other provider can beat BlueHost in providing the best price-value for blog sites. Alright, maybe I’m lying because Bluehost is not only the best web host for blogs but for any other web site too from simple static page to social networking sites.

How do I know this?

1. I am using BlueHost, our company is using it for our corporate site, support website and in our social networking site. We are using BlueHost even in our business/project websites.  The only drawback is we cannot use BlueHost for our Windows hosting need. BlueHost exclusively provides their hosting plan in Linux only and I’m not aware if they have plans to offer in the future.

2. If you don’t believe on my personal testament, just do a simple Google search for “best web host for blogs”, check some of the sites on the first result page and I assure you that BlueHost is is always mentioned, if not listed within their top 3 choices.

3. Even WordPress,org, on their recommended web hosting page, put BlueHost on their first choice. see http://wordpress.org/hosting/

This is not a pay-per-post review. I’m just one of their satisfied customers but to be perfectly honest with all you my dear readers, the link to BlueHost contained my affiliate ID which may give me some moolah.

Sometimes you come up with a great blog story. You know it will drive you a lot of traffic but you have a problem. No one knows about your great blog post.

In order to get maximum attention you need to spread the word around. This is where the social / bookmark networks come handy.

Bill Gate is using the technology. Mircosoft is taking advantage of this new marketing strategy. What about you? Are you harnessing the power of social networks?

Social Network Logos

What is a social / bookmark network?

It’s a place where you can share your stories or blogs and network or bookmarks with others. Take Digg and StumbleUpon for example. You submit your blog story to the network, allowing other members to vote and comment on it. More popular stories that receive a certain number of votes get promoted to the front page. Most social networks are different. Some even allow you to export a large number of bookmarks straight from your browser.

Why social networks?

1) Social networks get a lot of traffic due to their nature. Users often return to read the latest stories and share their own.

2) Readers are usually only one click away from your blog. A popular submission can bring you thousands of daily visitors.

3) Most social networks are free and take seconds to register and submit your first entry.

4) You will be surprised when you see the amount of other websites that use feeds from various social networks. A good story can spread across the network like wild fire.

5) If your story will not get to the front page you can always submit another one. In most cases there is no limit on the amount of stories you can submit.

6) Most social networks are search engine friendly. Not only your story will be picked up by major search engines in no time, in most cases you will also get a reciprocal link. Some social networks have very good google page rank (PR)

Tips and tricks:

1) An interesting, catchy story is often a must. Your main target is to get promoted to the front page by getting enough votes. You need to convince other readers to vote for your story. Strange, shocking and controversial stories often do well.

2) You can always ask your friends to join and vote for you in order to get more votes. Don’t create fake accounts because you will simply get banned.

Secret tip: Form an alliance with other bloggers and vote for each other’s work.

3) The more stories you submit the better. If you want a steady flow of traffic you will need a steady flow of submissions.

4) Just enjoy your experience. I certainly find it more interesting compared to other methods of blog promotion, such as link development.

Social networking sites are useful, aside for their marketing potential,  but as a way of keeping in touch not just with your friends but with your universe of friends.

There are a lot of various social networks around. Simple search on google should do the trick.

As promised, WordPress 2.9 was released as scheduled. The new version, code named “Carmen” named in honor of magical jazz vocalist Carmen McRae is now available for download.

WordPress 2.9

This is not just an upgrade but a major release. This new version comes with over 500 bug fixes and enhancements which makes it a recommended download and install.

Over 140 developers contributed on this released version.

New Features include:

1. Undo – you can now undo or unerase a post or comment if you accidentally deleted them. No more annoying  “are you sure” messages on every delete.

2. Built-in image editor – no more Adobe Photoshop for me.  This is a basic image editor that  allows you to crop, edit, rotate, flip, and scale your images

3. Batch plugin update – It’s now possible to upgrade up to 10 plugins at the same time, and it will check the compatibility too. No more surprises if a plugin will work or not

Best WordPress Theme

4. Oembed(Easier video embeds) – allows you to just paste a URL on your post and WordPress will magically turn it into the proper embed code. It supports popular sites such as YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, and WordPress.tv (and more in the next release).

5. Improved theme and plugin Editor - When you’re editing files in the theme and plugin editors it remembers your location and takes you back to the exact line after you save.

6. Automatic repair database – This is one of my favorite enhancements. Just enable it in your wp-config.php file by adding define(‘WP_ALLOW_REPAIR’, true).

7. Sidebar description – put a nice description  on your sidebar on what they do.

You can upgrade easily from your WordPress Dashboard by going to Tools > Upgrade, or you can download from WordPress.org

Here’s short video summarizing some of the cool things about the new released version: