Blog Tricks and Tips: trust

For any blog or website, having multiple online presences is one way to gain visitors’ trust. These presences can be Facebook Fan pages, Google Plus Business Pages, YouTube channels, and other social media profiles. But for webmasters, running a website and managing all these accounts is one hell of a task, and often consumes a lot of time. In such cases, webmasters can assign administrative roles to trusted people. And Google is here to help! Using Google Webmaster Tools, webmasters can now easily add associates, or trusted users, to manage their YouTube presence for them.

How does it work?

Google recently released this associates feature. An associate is a trusted user who will manage a certain task only. This feature is available for most Google Products, so associates for YouTube or Google Plus accounts (etc) can be added. These associates can’t access site data like site owners. They are only authorized to do a certain task in other Google products.

Once you associate a YouTube channel with your site, that channel will become the ‘official’ channel for that site. So there’ll be no confusion as to whether a channel is fake or real. Hence, your brand gets recognized.

Associating a YouTube channel with your site

Before you start, it's important to note down one thing. To add a YouTube associate, a YouTube Partner Program account is required. Members of YouTube Partner Program who have created a channel can be linked to another site.

Adding associates in Webmaster Tools

To add an associate from Webmaster Tools, log into your account, and select the site you want from the dashboard
Click on Associates under Configuration, and then click Add New User

Now, enter the email address associated with the YouTube Partner Program account. You will also have to choose the type of user you want to add. Select YouTube, and click Add. The user will then be added as an associate to your site.

Adding associates from YouTube

Log into your YouTube Partner account, and click on the user menu. Choose Settings >> Associated Website.
Fill in the page you want your channel to be associated with, and click add

If you own the page yourself, then you're done. But if you don't, then a request will be sent to the owner of the site, and they will have to accept it. Once accepted, the association will be complete.

Associates are a great way to assign trusted people with the management of your website's properties. It'll also help you get recognized by setting up an 'official' channel for your website, so people would feel securer while on your website or on your YouTube channel. Currently, integration is available only for YouTube and Chrome Web Store. But Google is trying this feature out more, and integration for more Google products is expected to come soon.

We'll keep you updated about future Google products integration. In the meantime, if you have questions, feel free to ask. Peace :)

Source : mybloggertricks[dot]com

You will find countless blogging and SEO tips online and on this blog. If you don't trust the credibility of what other say, then you can take it from Matt Cutts, the Google guy. He is the head of the web-spam team at Google, so he definitely knows what he is talking about, as he is the person in charge of controlling what blogs get a good spot in SERPs and what blogs get penalized due to over-optimization or other SEO or blogging mistakes. During his one-hour lecture at a WordPress Camp, he shared some blogging tips and ideas that we feel worth re-sharing with other people who weren't there or didn't see the video.

File paths

Matt shared in his lecture, that in your file paths, you must not use multiple parameters for stuff like search queries etc. Also, it is better to use underscores as word separators rather than dashes, although dashes are fine too. And as far as file extensions are concerned, all extensions, such as .php, .html, .asp, .pdf are fine. The only discouraged file extension is .exe, because that's an easy way to get infected by a virus. Avoid .exe files.

Getting onto Google News

To get a blog included in Google News, it must have multiple authors. Getting into Google News can boost your traffic, as it channels out some competition, and leaves you open to compete for an audience eager to gran hold of any piece of news information.

Create controversy

This is a great blogging tip, and Matt talked about it in some detail. And we totally agree with the notion. Creating a controversy is a good way of gaining attention. When you talk about a controversial topic, people are more likely to comment and share their views, and hence get the conversation going. Controversy doesn't necessarily need to be related to some scandal. It could be your views on technology, or comparison between two smartphones, and so on.

Contribute insightful analysis

One great idea for writing blog posts is contributing insightful analysis of the services that people ordinarily use. For example, you can look into which service gets more spam, Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail? Or, you can compare and contrast different cloud storage services. Provide data that will help people make better decisions.

Provide useful services

Another great blogging idea is to provide useful services to your audience. These can include tools, or other cool features. For example, iPhone apps, or a PDF sign converter, or perhaps a lolcat builder. The sky is the limit really. Notice how we provide some tools such as HTML Editor and Encoder, Color Code Generator etc which are useful to bloggers and other such people.

Make lists!

Making lists is also a good way of getting some extra traffic, and providing some useful information to your readers. Many people have asked us about the 'top 10' lists we've been sharing here at MBT and especially at SEM. Well, they weren't without reason and effect. Start with something like 'top 10 plugins for...' or 'top 13 reasons why something rules' etc.

Create tutorials

Create tutorials, and teach people on how to create some forms or configure their auto-responders, and so on. The best way to go about this is to write about something when you learn about it yourself. That way, you will be able to memorize the process while educating other people.

Liveblog!

Liveblogging is covering a social event live on your blog, with regular updates and feeds on what's going on. Lots of people liveblog about conferences or seminars/webinars. It is just one of the many ways you can keep your audience engaged.

Follow other blogs for ideas

First of all, you should follow other blogs in your niche to find out what they are doing, and get ideas from there. For creative ideas, you should visit sites like Reddit, Digg, Techmeme, and so on.

Be creative

It's a well known fact that creativity inspires buzz/word-of-mouth. And that is the fastest way of getting your blog or site viral. Creating creative and original content is a sure way to get noticed. And where creativity is concerned, the sky is your limit. one particularly funny suggestion Matt Cutts gave was, 'sell your mustache on eBay' or 'Say Google fast' :). But then again, its all up-to you to decide how creative you want to be. And the more creative, the better. it almost always boils down to how original is your content.