Ever since, i decided that i am going to be a Pro at blogging, i have had too many chat sessions with my friends and fellow webmasters regarding the same. I wanted to know as to what i should be doing to make a start. Surprisingly, the top two answers were unanimous. All said:

1. “Content is the King”. Well, no doubts about that.
2. Get a custom design for your blog. A professional one!

Well, i don’t think anyone has any doubts about the first point. Content is the King, and no one can deny that. It’s the very basic thing. But the second point is what made me thought. A custom design for my blog. Well, it wasn’t a problem for sure since i own a web designing company/service. A new design would have been a piece of cake. But what i thought was whether the visitors really look at your design? or they are there for the content you have on your blog?

Well, i think we can’t argue on this topic. Let’s take two sites as example. TechCrunch and JohnChow. TechCrunch has some quality content on the site, but they planned to keep the site as simple as it could be. On the other hand, JohnChow and also ShoeMoney has a great content plus a great design. Maybe, just maybe, the design factor does make a difference.

So what do you think? What makes more impact on your visitor.

• The Content? Design really does not matter.
• Or the content plus the design?

The topic is debateful, however there is absolutely no harm in getting a custom theme for my blog. So i have decided to go for it. The new design is on it’s way and will soon be a part of SharatJaswal.com.

There is no sneak peek previews at the moment for the them. I have approved the design and it’s been coded. Probably, in couple of days, it will be here on my site. And just for remembering how my present theme looked like (for future reference), well, i am going to attach the screenshot along with this post right there at top. Time to get back to my theme development mode…

As many of you know, i ain’t a big or professional blogger. Atleast not yet. I just started this blog. But before i made this blog, i regularly used to visit biggies like ProBlogger and ShoeMoney. I still visit them a lot. But at that time i always wished to do something similar. You know! Making your own blog, writing something cool, people waiting for your useful & informational posts, having lot of fans, etc etc. After then i decided that probably it’s time to stop wishing for such things and get practical. So the i made this blog and started blogging!

After few initial thoughts, it seemed as if i had nothing to blog about. It was because of the fact that i was looking for blogging about the things which i myself wasn’t sure of. So sooner i fell short of ideas and topics on which i could blog about. Seemed like it was end of my blog before it ever started.

But then came, some friendly advices and suggestion from fellow webmasters and bloggers. And i again had somethings to think about. A couple of days later ShoeMoney came up with a great advice on his blog titled “My Blogging Advice To Connect With Your Readers” and things weren’t the same anymore. ShoeMoney gave three basic points for bloggers which helped a big time. They are:

• Don’t Try To Be Something That You’re Not!
• Celebrate Your Weaknesses!
• Learn To Take Criticism!

I guess that was it. I implemented this advice of his on my blogging mind. And everything now just looks wonderful. Whenever i am online, i just log on to my site and write something that i need to. I don’t have to look at other’s website for ideas and hot topics anymore. Blogging has never been more easier for me. All thanks to those three good points from ShoeMoney.

So, do you want to be a professional blogger? It’s easy. Just get these two words in your head. “Get Real” and that’s the bottomline!

Well, this has been a week with some important news and updates. I won’t go in each and every detail, but just few tits and bits.

• Google continues to play childish. It again strikes directories and paid links sites. Many inner pages of directories went down to PR0 or a gray bar. Some unlucky directories even got PR0 on their homepage. Yeah, i know how disgusting this is. But anyways, we just found one more reason to say “Goodbye Google Pagerank“.
• Larry Page, The co-founder of Google Inc has decided to tie a knot with his girlfriend next month. Larry and Lucy Southworth, his girlfriend, will get married on 8th of December’07. The location is still undisclosed. Larry is one of the world’s wealthiest man. As a matter of fact, he is the Silicon Valley’s richest bachelor with a fortune worth about $20 billion. Well, the couple will definitely be showered with all webmaster’s blessing… even from web directory owners..
• India won the Indian Oil Cup in cricket. It was a 5 match series against cricket rivals Pakistan. They clinched the series 3-2 and very convincingly. All of a sudden, Indian cricket looks promising with likes of Mahindra Singh Dhoni, Yuvraj Singh, Robin Uthappa, Master Blaster Sachin Tendulkar and Gautam Gambhir. Well, i wish them more success in the future.
• Matt Hulett, WidgetBucks‘ CEO announced that traffic from outside US and Canada (which they term as “International Traffic”) is unlikely to buy from a U.S merchant website because of various obvious reasons. This resulted in dropped RPC (Rate Per Click). From now on, merchants will not pay for the clicks from International Traffic and neither will the publishers get credits for any clicks coming from the same traffic. So best way out is to implement a geo-based ad placement service to determine when to display a WidgetBucks ad widget and when to display other advertising options. This new announcement however does not effect the Ocyober and first half of November earnings, by the way.
• WordPress 2.3 (The latest version) was a nightmare for many wordpress powered blog owners. Specially for the ones who upgraded their blog from previous wordpress versions. The new version has many new and exciting features. The built in tag option is an excellent feature. But problems came when the blog were upgraded from 2.2.x version to 2.3 version. Everything in admin panel stopped working. All one could see were bugs and lot of errors. Many wordpress plugins proved to be incompatible with this new version. Some even faced problems with the themes they were using. Well, a solution would be out soon, like probably a WordPress 2.3.1 or something. But if you’re upgrading your blog’s wordpress version, you better be taking backups before doing so.
• From the Formula One corner, well Fernando Alonso quit McLaren couple of weeks back. The news i last heard was that his former partner, Renault, are trying hard to convince Alonso to join them, once again. Other than Renault, there are good amount of talks going on between Alonso and Red Bull as well. Fernando Alonso hasn’t decided anything yet. It’s just a matter of time. I think he will go with Renault, with whom he won the 2005 and 2006 Drivers’ titles.

On my end…well i am thinking about dropping my idea on “Google Friendly Web Directory“. My “FREE” directory lost all it’s PR and finally came down to PR0. Remember, it’s a free directory and not a paid link selling directory. The Google’s PageRank algorithms and the kiddish behavior on paid links sucks big time. So there is no point making a blah blah friendly directory.

That’s all this week. I hope the forthcoming weeks have something good in store for me…. and us!

No it’s not that Google is ending it’s PageRank system. Rather it is the webmaster community that is ending the PageRank system. Today morning, the first thing i did was to remove Google toolbar from my Firefox browser. Also, from now onwards i would support Firefox without Google toolbar. This is being done, so that we all webmasters can enjoy our life. I would never want to see that green bar again in my life. So yes, it’s a goodbye to Google’s pagerank. And i am happy about it.

Google’s new pagerank algorithm has been pathetic. Their new algorithms against paid links and web directories has been disgusting. Their assault on web directories ain’t ending yet. Yesterday, i saw another PR Downgrade. Again on directories. Well, that was enough to spoil my morning. Now i have decided, that i won’t let Google rule my life. I will continue to do hard work on my directories and other site with paid links. That’s my business. That’s how i make my living. And i am not going to let any Google pagerank crap to stop me from making my living.

Advice for my fellow webmasters: Everyone has been effected in one way or the other by the Pagerank system. I have taken a wise step today, by removing that green bar. There are other ways to judge the sites as well and i am going to do just that from now on. I think it’s high time that we stop trusting on Pagerank system and start believing on our own quality of judgment. Say Goodbye to Google Pagerank!!!!

Search Engine Optimization is every webmaster’s dream. To be a successful webmaster, one needs to have successful websites. And to have successful websites, you needs to empower your search engine optimization skills.

The fact is, that Search Engine Optimization is the only way out to achieve better Search Engine rankings. If you think you know SEO basics as well as anything, you might be badly mistaken. Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and others, work day in and day out to improve their algorithms, so as to give better rankings and results. So the SEO techniques keep on changing very frequently. All we need to know are the very basics of optimization to help us keep up with the ever changing trends of the search engines.

Keeping that in mind, i was searching for the various ebooks and information on SEO. And my search ended at Aaron Wall’s SEO Book. Aaron Wall, as many must be knowing, is a big name in SEO industry. His work, achievements and experience earned him a lot of name, fame and respect in the webmaster’s world.

Aaron Wall, launched SEO Book in 1994, wherein he shares his knowledge, experience and techniques. His “to the point” guidance has helped many young and old webmasters. Since 1994, about 10,000 professionals have learned Search Engine Optimization, just by reading The SEO Book. The result has been unanimous. Each and every professional, who has read this ebook and implemented the SEO techniques has found a new and a better life. They all witnessed much better web visibility for their websites.

The SEO Book is a 328 page, instantly downloadable ebook, which comes for a price tag of $79. Considering the quality and importance of information that SEO Book contains, i think $79 is just a very small amount. The benefits if thought of, can be many thousand times compared to what you pay. The ebook is written in a very simple english. The techniques are well classified in chapters. So even if you are an independent web professional or a first time webmaster, it will still be that easy for you to become an SEO expert.

Now this is supposed to be the best SEO guide on web right now. I am already in. What about you? Still thinking?

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