People define negative SEO in a variety of ways. Some consider it the malicious efforts of your competitors to either build unsavory links to your website or steal the best links from your website. Others would add website hacking, content theft, brand impersonation, and similar strategies to the list. I consider negative SEO anything that could harm your reputation, visibility, or traffic in search. With that in mind, here are some tools and services you can use to monitor negative SEO activity and the harm it does to your website and brand.

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As Google starts clamping down on Guest Blogging as an SEO technique the message is louder and clearer than ever. If you want to increase your ranking on Google you need to EARN links by creating content that people will naturally want to share.

If you’re not sure how to start doing this take a look at the infographic below from WebSearch SEO which gives you 16 tips to help you along the way.

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Podcasting is an excellent medium to share content, and is showing signs of resurgence with a number of thought leaders and professional now entering (or re-entering) the Podcast arena.

In a recent interview, Chris Brogan was asked this question — If you had to give up one of your platforms, which one would it be? His answer — I would give up my blog and would keep my podcast and newsletter.

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Learning in Hand created an infographic that ties in the value structure presented by SUCCES in with how the model can contribute to the success of a podcast. And while video will always garner a strong viewership, choosing to go the audio route is just as successful. Apple announced this year that they surpassed 1 billion subscriptions for podcasts through their iTunes app with additional apps like Soundcloud and iHeartRadio cropping up as a means to listen to even more podcasts hosted to the sites and major networks and celebrities getting on the podcasting bandwagon as well.

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Facebooks automated year in review slideshows are meant to surface highlights from the year that was, but for some the virtual scrapbook simply brings back bad memories. In the case of web designer Eric Meyer, a photo of his recently deceased daughter appeared, surrounded by confetti, illustrations of party goers dancing and the exclamation Eric, here's what your year looked like! In response, Eric wrote a blog post about what he refers to as that apps Inadvertent Algorithmic Cruelty, and pointing to the shortcomings of modern software design.

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RSS readers for linux allow users to view information contained in rss feeds in a specific location in an intuitive way.

RSS Readers for Linux

Automatically post to Twitter when an Amazon RSS feed is updated.

IFTT Directions

Feed Tips for the Blogging Community:

Make it easy to subscribe to your feed. Have an RSS logo near the top of your blog (you’ve seen them – the little orange and white squares?

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The summary is your hook to get readers to click on your article. Think of the summary as the hot fudge to your article titles ice cream. You can give a headline that states Ice Cream and it may be enough to turn a few heads, but not likely. Add a quick summary that describes the ice cream in more depth – such as the promise of a creamy, chocolate, mouthwatering, hot-fudge sundae – and you are far more likely to get the attraction you want and need.

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Always willing to help out a fellow blogger, I gladly pass along the information. But then gee golly one morning bells and whistles went off! Why don’t I create a tutorial showing others how to truncate their posts?

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When it comes to content marketing, your results do not only come from the content you create—your blog can also help you build a haven to nurture your current and future customers. In this post, we are going to look at the benefits of having a community for your blog, the challenges blog moderators face, and how to create an engaging space for your readers.

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This is how Iaccess my own infographics pinboard: complete article

Every blog has an RSS feed but with Mailchimp you take your average RSS feed up a notch. By using a newsletter service like Mailchimp you can take your standard feed and turn it into an email campaign. This might sound confusing but Mailchimp helps make this process easy and this post will walk you through the process step by step.

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For all the entrepreneurs who are running or launching a startup business, now it is the time for you to think strategically about new business opportunities or joint ventures for next year. Scheduling some time to attend conferences and business events with inspirational figures or likeminded professionals is always a smart move.

With countless numbers of conferences and events out there, BusinessVibes helps you to shortlist these 10 best and most recommended conferences and events for entrepreneurs to attend in 2015:

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Twitter has permanently disabled the Twitter RSS Feeds, but thanks to Amit Agarwal from Labnol, he has come up with an alternate way to create Twitter RSS Feed using a Google Script and Twitter widgets.

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From a marketing perspective, an RSS feed is a direct pipeline to your target audience. It’s also a way to boost your Google search profile—sites that update more frequently get better search rankings.

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What is social media doing to us? Is it stressing us out with its never-ending pings announcing new baby pictures, engagements, and unimportant messages to respond to? Or is it keeping us connected to people, and therefore happier? These are tricky and loaded questions, but a new survey from Pew adds a bit of evidence to the social media reduces stress side of the ledger. At least if you are a lady.

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In between folding laundry and cleaning up after her children, a mom receives $5,000 to blog about an iPhone application for seven days. Another woman earns twice as much as her husbands $35,000 annual salary by hosting several one-hour Twitter parties each week.  

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Do not just rely on visitors who click on the RSS badge or your web site. You must proactively syndicate your content to other appropriate RSS directories and web sites.

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For optimal crawling, we recommend using both XML sitemaps and RSS feeds. XML sitemaps will give Google information about all of the pages on your site. RSS feeds will provide all updates on your site, helping Google to keep your content fresher in its index. Note that submitting sitemaps or feeds does not guarantee the indexing of those URLs.

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In our increasingly connected society, building a social media presence is as commonplace as getting a driver’s license. Personal Facebook profiles, LinkedIn accounts, and Twitter handles are common among students and professionals alike. However, frequently updating your Pinterest boards does not necessarily equip you with the tools and experience that you need when crafting a social media strategy for your budding business.

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A new year has begun, and it is promising to bring further advances in technology and changes in the way we work online.As marketers, we already need to be aware of the many different marketing outlets available – whether on or offline – and know how to take advantage of them.

When it comes to the web, though, things are often in a much greater state of flux. So really, what are some of the best ways to keep up with a living, breathing beast like the internet?

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I am looking for a way to get an RSS-Feed that serves the same content as the main view on Twitter. I am following about 20 people at the moment and I could of course get an RSS-Feed from each of them separately, but I do not want my RSS-Reader to be cluttered with 20 Feeds if I can aggregate them into a single feed.

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Have you considered RSS Mesh?

Super Bowl ads have long become their own kind of spectacle, with viewers ready to be dazzled by what advertisers will air to millions of viewers during the big game. Now, that marketing focus has extended beyond the television set as brands ramp up viewer engagement with tweets and other social campaigns.

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According to a recent social-media engagement study, Americans now spend more time on social media than any other Internet activity, including email. Social media is not going anywhere and businesses, small and large, are now recognizing their online presence is an essential part of their marketing strategy. Eight out of 10 small to medium-sized businesses now use social media to drive growth for their business, and three out of five say they have gained new customers through social media marketing.

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The power of social media is indisputable; what you say on line creates a lasting impact.

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These days, prospects and customers have more information thrown at them than ever before. From phone calls and snail mail to emails and social channels like LinkedIn and Twitter, each new way for a person to initiate contact makes it harder for companies to break through all the noise.

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All of the most recent Recipes and Entertaining RSS articles from GoodHousekeeping.com.

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86% of B2B and 77% of B2C organizations use content marketing.

This makes the content marketing landscape extremely competitive. With more and more companies using content creation and its distribution to improve brand awareness, credibility and niche authority, run-of-the mill content marketing does not work anymore.

If you take a look at some of the best content marketing campaigns of 2014, you realize you can not afford to take content marketing for granted. You need to be able to create compelling content and ensure it reaches your target audience.

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We have all seen the tragedies that have struck a little too close to home. Be they humans' doing or the acts of mother nature, they are jarring at best, in part because they so often feel as though they are beyond our control. While we certainly can not prevent all tragedies, or even predict them, the way we react to such events can be powerfully influential. When crisis strikes, here are some things you can do to help yourself and those around you:

When Crisis Strikes

Begin at the beginning

When you start out social selling, do not automate any of your processes. Just focus on figuring out how to participate in a social conversation and getting connections through LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

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Is a wave of consolidation about to begin in the Big Data market?

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Whether you own a blog or follow a number of RSS feeds, you probably share your favorite articles on Twitter to bring them to a larger audience. Twibble takes care of this for you, and automatically tweets articles for you based on your preferences.

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After giving it some thought, and seeking counsel from friends who work for social start-ups in Silicon Valley, I called Luca and told him that he could have a YouTube account, but with one big caveat. We would make his account settings private, so that no one could leave comments.

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Podcasting content comes in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Businesses are finding many different and creative ways of incorporating podcasts into their business strategies and marketing plans.

Here are just some of the various types of content that businesses are turning into podcasts...

Creative Podcasting for Businesses

Compared to the best-known RSS feed readers on the market today, News Notifications is as straightforward and uncomplicated as its drab title implies.

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As an early adopter of media since the early 80s, I love everything about media, its immediacy, urgency, fluidity, and ability to impact the masses and unify people and ideas in real time, in the moment.

Social marketing continues to be a powerful force for good, but as we know it can be a dangerous platform for bad too.

Through prior careers in entertainment and broadcast radio sales, and celebrating 8 years in my current social media consultancy, social marketing clearly is the most effective way to build branding, credibility and the bottom line.

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Marketers are spending millions of dollars creating compelling content for everything from DIY videos on YouTube to posts about the latest trends on their blogs. But, many are still not curating all that content under a single roof. Mobile is the answer to that problem for many.

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Whether you are still struggling to get over the loss of Google Reader or you want to try out RSS subscriptions for the first time, you can set up Gmail as a makeshift feed reader in just a few minutes. We have outlined the steps you need to follow to turn your inbox into a news ticker below.

While it was not built as an RSS reader, Gmail certainly does a fine job nevertheless. You can filter your feeds as you like, star articles for later reading, catch up on mobile devices, and use the apps powerful search capabilities to browse through archived content.

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RSS feeds are fine if you can find a good feed reader and the time to grind through the results, but let’s face it - email is the center of most people’s universes. So why not converge RSS and email? If this sounds like something you would like to do, you need to take a look at the Web service Blogtrottr.

Blogtrottr is simple to use: you enter a feed URL, the address you wish to have the email of the feed sent to, select the frequency of delivery.

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How did you end up learning the unwritten rules for social media etiquette?

For me, it was a lot of watching and waiting, a bit of experimenting, and tons of trial and error. When I first started out on social media, I had just the most basic rules and intuitions. Even now, I feel like I learn a new quirk or quibble on a near-daily basis.

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One of the interesting qualities of freelancing work is that you may never meet your clients in real life. Perhaps more than any other job market, freelancers rely heavily on their online image- an aggregate of their resume, portfolio and personality to set themselves apart and attract new clients who may very well be located on the other side of the world.

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When I ran a Facebook ad recently for a nonprofit where I volunteer, I was surprised how specific you could get in targeting potential customers. If I wanted to advertise the event I was promoting to women between the ages of 24 and 26 in my city who were unmarried and educated, who watched Girls, owned a dog and liked designer purses — I could do that.

Being able to target ads to a specific market can help a seller reach the people who want or need their products and services. Unfortunately, that means buyers may also be encouraged to spend more than they should if they are not mindful.

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Long gone are the days when social media was a giant question mark in terms of measurement and ROI.

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I write for and in a lot of places. There is my mailing list, my website, publications that require exclusive content, and even a few where my writing is regularly syndicated. Typically, although it seems like more, I write one article per week, and I write it with my mailing list in mind.

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If you are a Twitch user, reset your password. Better yet, regardless of the site or service, do not use the same password on multiple sites.

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News reader applications like Feedly or Flipboard are great for browsing and even searching through news items, but they lack the ability to send notifications proactively.  Emails from Google Alerts can be tardy, and at other times, articles can slip by completely.

Never fear!  Used together, two web applications, IFTTT and Feed Rinse,  solve this problem easily.

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When standardized tests are shared nationwide—as they now are, under the Common Core system that's been adopted in 46 states—cheating suddenly becomes a whole lot easier. Especially since teenagers now share just about everything on social media.

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n a recent research study, we spoke with dozens of professionals about their use of social media, and were struck by the variety of approaches they are using.

Some professionals, we found, still manage to avoid social media altogether. But most see that as unrealistic in many occupations, and are unwilling to be deprived of the advantages social media affords in terms of connecting to people and collecting information.

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In 2014, consumer shopping behavior evolved rapidly. Shopping online and through mobile devices is the new norm, and the experience has become increasingly more social with platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. These platforms, in turn, have launched new commerce capabilities like the buy button.

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