How to you check the popularity of your website

Websites can also be categorized similarly based on popularity and reputation. Here are few methods for checking the popularity and reputation of any website.

Alexa Ranking

This is perhaps the most used and most controversial method of checking the popularity of a website. In this method, the traffic rank of a website as compared to other websites in the internet is measured. Traffic rank is an indication of the popularity of a website. For normal website, an alexa traffic rank of anything less than 500,000 is considered to be good enough. The top ten ranked sites in the world according to alexa are:

1. Google - Alexa Rank 1
2. Facebook - Alexa Rank 2
3. Youtube - Alexa Rank 3
4. Yahoo.com – Alexa Rank 4
5. Blogger.com – Alexa Rank 5
6. Baidu - Alexa Rank 6
7. Wikipedia - Alexa Rank 7
8. Windows Live – Alexa Rank 8
9. Twitter - Alexa Rank 9
10. QQ.com – Alexa Rank 10

Inbound Links

Inbound links are the links pointing to a website from other sites.  More number of inbound links from different websites indicates the reputation of the website. Although Alexa lists the number of inbound links, not all links are actually listed. It is difficult to find all the inbound links of a particular website. Different tools for checking inbound links for a particular website are available on the internet, but results vary greatly. The Quality of inbound links also matters, an inbound link from a reputed website like bbc.com is worth more than 10 inbound links from lesser known sites.

Finally, there are websites or blogs that may be popular among a local community and frequently visited by their members. So, for some websites, the popularity and reputation may be irrelevant as long as it serves the purpose of a community.

How to Make Your Blog or Website Popular

Many webmaster ask this question to SEO experts that how to make my website or blog popular quickly. For them I would say that there is no shortcut of success. All you need is to be fair in whatever you do and have patience. You will see the positive results. In this post, i will explain few points, if followed can lead your website to big success.

Unique Contents:

The first and very important step to make your website a big hit is that you should provide unique contents. Never copy the contents from popular website in a hope that you will make your website popular very soon. There are advantages of providing unique contents. All big poplar websites will link back to you if your content is unique and have some importance for their users. More and more popular websites will start linking back to you. Your authority will increase. You will receive more backlinks and hence more Google PageRank value as well as more referral traffic.

Hold Your Visitors:

This is another art you should know. You can get traffic from many sources but if your website is not able to hold this traffic, your website is not able to turn this traffic to re- visitors, your website popularity will never increase. A website is popular because of re-visitors. If users feel that your website is worth visiting again, it's your win and sign of the popularity of your website.

Here are some points on how can you hold your visitors-

• Unique content will hold visitors.
• Website navigation should be easy. User should easily get what they are looking for.
• Never try to make your users fool by providing misleading information.
• Never distract your visitor from your website contents.
• Some kind of regular visitor participation like poll, survey, contest etc.
• Keep away your website from Spamming

Provide New Contents:

Update your contents frequently. Search engines like new contents. Fresh and unique contents will keep your SERP up and high SERP will turn into high traffic and hence more chances of your website to be popular. For a single service or product provider websites, they can focus more on quality of their services. Always try to keep your website search engine friendly in order to achieve high SERP.

Active participation in Related Niche:

Active participation in related niche websites, blogs to pull traffic as well as to put our website in front of users of other websites is required. More exposure your website will get, more likely users will come back to your website. The form of participation could be blog commenting, forum posting and article submission etc.

Social Bookmarking and Social Networking:

Social Networking and Social Bookmarking can bring good amount of traffic to your website and can give exposure to your website. Your next job is to convert this traffic to your regular visitors.

Drive Traffic to Your Blog or Website with Google, Yahoo and Facebook Groups

In today's world, Social Networking plays an important role in the success and failure of any blog or website. It is as important as the content of your website. More social networking leads to more users/traffic for your website. In this article, I will explain how you can drive the traffic to your website or blog using Groups services from some of the top internet brands e.g. Google, Yahoo! and Facebook. Though there are other sites as well but we will talk about these only in this article.

Yahoo! Groups is the one who started its services a way before Google and Facebook and still the leader in its offerings. Google and Facebook groups too are trying to catch up Yahoo! very fast. For any website or blog, it is very important to interact with its users. Though the website itself provides the options like comments, ratings, poll etc. but apart from interaction in your website, you should also explore other platforms to interact with users who might be interested in your blog or website.

Yahoo! Groups: If you are a owner of a blog or website and you want to promote it and looking for more user interaction then you can start a new Yahoo! Group related to your website/blog. This group can be used to showcase the things about the topic of your website. E.g. If I own a site called nokia5800downloads.blogspot.com, i can create a Yahoo! group with name Nokia 5800 Downloads. Yahoo! Groups allows you to add new members, post articles, images, attachements, links, etc. You can create polls to interact with your group members. You can even promote your group using the tools provided by Yahoo! Groups.

Just add more and more users to your Yahoo! Group and talk about your blog/website. Yahoo! Groups is a powerful tool and it can drive good amout of traffic to your website. I have seen the groups with thousands of users. You can create a new Yahoo! Group by visiting the URL http://groups.yahoo.com/

Google Groups: Unlike Yahoo! Groups, Google Groups is very simple and offers you pretty much the same as Yahoo! Groups. You can add members, create pages, add links, photos and files. You have discussions where you can post about your website and let users of the group interact with you on the topic of discussion. The interface is very simple and it's very easy for first time users as well.

You can create a Google Group by visiting the URL http://groups.google.com/. You can add a link of your group to your website so that a visitor coming to your website can join the group and later you can keep informing him about any latest updates of your website through this group.

Facebook Groups: After Google and Yahoo!, Facebook too has Facebook Groups, a service which helps you connect and share with the people interested in your website or blog. If you have a Facebook account, creating and running a group is as easy as opening a webpage. Fill the few information like your Group name, the category it belongs to and a little description and there you go. You have your Facebook Groups created. Unlike Yahoo! and Google Groups, Facebook Groups is very advanced. You can add links, images, videos in a second with the cool interface it provides. You can set an event, start a discussion. You can even promote your Facebook Group.

You can invite people to join your group. There are plenty of ways provided in the interface to interact with the members of your group. Facebook Groups is the best offerings in terms of interface and functionalities.

How to get you backlinks for your blog or website

Backlink Definition:

Backlinks are those links that point to your website or webpage. For Example:- If i write a blog post and other webmasters find it useful. They will link back to my post in their blog and website.

The other terms for backlinks are incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links.



Backlink Usage:
Backlinks are very important in SEO(Search Engine Optimization). Backlink is very important factor to measure the popularity or importance of a website or webpage. Search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and others give much importance to backlinks. Baclinks can increase your web traffic from search engines as well as from referrals.

Backlink Tips:

1:-To increase the Google page rank of your website, try to get backlinks from high PR websites.

2:-Submit articles to directories to get backlinks. Article Submission is very effective way to get backlinks.

3:-Regular commenting on popular websites can help you to build backlinks.

4:-Submit your blog or website URL to free directories to get backlinks. You will find many free directories on internet with high PR.

5:-Social Netowrking and Social Bookmarking can bring you good amount of backlinks.

How to Drive Traffice-with Yahoo Search Engine

Yahoo!, the second largest search engine after Google is suppose to be the toughest search engine for webmasters to rank high. Yahoo! search algorithm is very different from Google and this is the reason, a website ranking good in Google may not rank well in Yahoo! In this post, I will explain few tips to get success with Yahoo!, tips to get good amount of traffic from Yahoo search engine. Tips to perform well on Yahoo for your keywords.

Your success with Yahoo is dependent on Yahoo itself. Yahoo provides various tools for webmasters in order to bring them good amount of traffic from Yahoo! search engine. In this post, we will explore all these tools in details.

Yahoo publisher network helps you to increase the reach of your website to new readers. Here is what you can do with Yahoo! publisher network.

• Submit your blog or website RSS feed to Yahoo!
• Allow other users to subscribe your RSS feed in their My Yahoo! pages using Add to MY Yahoo! button.
• Submit your website to Yahoo!
• Manage effectively your website with Yahoo! site explorer

Submit RSS feed to Yahoo! :

If you are not aware of RSS feed, refer to the post here. Once you have feed of your blog or website, you can take advantage of one of the world's most popular feed reader "My Yahoo!". Yahoo! has a large feed database and in order to have your website feed in their feed database, you should first login into Yahoo! using your Yahoo! login id and password. Once login, you can follow this page to submit your RSS feed to My Yahoo! page and Yahoo! feed database.

Once your feed is added, Yahoo! will do the rest. Depend on the frequency of your contents update on your website, Yahoo! will check your feed. You can also tell Yahoo! about your latest updates using Ping. The URL for the ping is-

http://ping.feeds.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u=[THE URL of your RSS feed].

In case, you are not aware of Ping, refer to the post here.

Add to MY Yahoo! :

Webmasters can have "Add to MY Yahoo!" button on their blog or website to let others subscribe the feed of your website in their "My Yahoo" webpage. Add to my Yahoo! button is very handy and comes in two style "Long button" and "short button with text" as given below.
You can click either of the button in order to add the RSS feed of my blog to your My Yahoo! page.

Submit your website to Yahoo :

Yahoo! provides you an option to tell to Yahoo! about your website or you can say a request to Yahoo! to include your website in their search engine. You can find it here http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html. In the above link, you will find Yahoo! search submission and Yahoo! directory submission. You can submit your website and website feed to Yahoo! for free.

Mange your website with Yahoo Site Explorer :

Yahoo site explorer gives you complete control over your website in Yahoo!. You can track the progress of your website with Yahoo! site explorer. You can see what all pages of your website are there in Yahoo! search index. You can track the internal and external links to your website. Most of the webmaster prefers backlinks calculations of Yahoo! than Google because it shows all your backlinks. If you are not aware of backlinks, refer to the post here.
You can submit and track the feed of your website in Yahoo! site explorer. You can delete the URL that you do not want Yahoo! to index.

If you want to drive traffic to your website from Yahoo!, follow all these steps in order to expose your website to Yahoo! and let Yahoo! throw thousands of readers to your website every day. Make your success with Yahoo!

Very recently Yahoo! launched a new look and feel for Yahoo Site Explorer. You can access it from http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/new

Increase Your Website Traffic And PageRank also

There are many webmaster looking for the ways to increase website traffic. This article will explain how to bring easy and targeted traffic to your website without much effort.

Most of the internet users are aware of the popular video sharing websites YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo and AOL Video. Did you know that these websites can bring good amount of traffic to your website everyday? In the below picture, you can see the kind of huge traffic these websites generates everyday.

Target your visitors: The first step is to target your visitors. The contents of the video should match to your website or blog contents. If your website is a technology website, then it's good to have videos related to technology.

Quality of videos: The contents of the video should be interesting so that it become popular easily. If the videos are good and helping, People will see it again and again.

Put website URL in videos: While creating videos, you should have your website URL in the video. While watching the video, people will see the URL and will remember it.

Now it's time to upload your videos to these video sharing websites and let them do the rest. Don't forget to include your URL in the description of the video.

There are many small video sharing and video websites which pulls the data from these big websites. For ex., My website is a nature and travel related website and I uploaded 3-4 videos of say aquarium to YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo and AOL Video. Now within a day or two, my videos will be pulled by many small video websites related to nature and travel. They will show your videos along with the description data you eneterd while upoloading videos.

You uploaded videos only to four major video sharing websites but your videos will be available to many small video sharing websites. What are the benifits out of it-

1: You will receive lots of free backlinks.

2: These high traffic websites are the first choice of search engines to crawl.

3: You will find many videos on these sites with good PageRank. Once your video get good Google PageRank, it's good for your website's PageRank.

You can also promote your uploaded videos using Social Networking. Video Sharing is an effective way of bringing long run traffic to your website as well as to increase your PageRank. Try it out.

Google PageRank for your Website

PageRank Definition:

PageRank is a Google way of measuring the importance of any webpage. The PageRank is the algorithm developed by the founders of Google and it's very popular among webmaster. A webpage can have PageRank any where between 0 to 10 depend on the algorithm or N/A ( In case, The webpage is new, not yet indexed by Google ).

The algorithm is purely link based. What Google says about PageRank-

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important." Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages' relative importance.

PageRank Usage:

PageRank is very popular algorithm that measures the importance of any webpage and based on the given rank, these pages are placed in search results. A higher page rank webpage will get more chances to appear on search result than the lower one.

PageRank Tips:

1:-Provide good quality content, good design, quality website and proper META tags. If content is good, everyone would love to visit the website again and again and will also link back to you.

2:-Try to get back links from high PageRank websites/blogs. The number of quality back links increases the PageRank significantly. Its good to have back links from even a PageRank 0 website, because it contributes to your PageRank, but not as much as link from high PageRank website.

3:-Increase your PageRank and let advertisers come to your website. Earn $$

How to Get Referral Traffic to Your Website or Blog

Wikipedia:

Wikipedia has a great potential to bring good traffic to your blog or website. Wikipedia is one of the favorite websites for search engines and its normally rank high in search engines and it has a large user base. You can leave your links in Wikipedia, if they are related to the topic.

Wikipedia is moderated so don't just leave any random link there. If your link is related to Wikipedia topic and helpful to others, it will be included. Once you have your link in Wikipedia. You can notice huge and never lasting referral traffic on your website from Wikipedia.

Craigslist:

Craigslist is a heavy traffic website which provides local classifieds and forums for jobs, housing, for sale, personals, services, local community, and events. You can post your ads with the link to your website. Craigslist is very popular website and can bring good amount of visitors to your website everyday.

Video sharing:

Video sharing is also an effective way to get referral traffic. You can read my post Tips To Increase Your Website Traffic And PageRank to learn more about how video sharing can bring traffic to your blog or website.

PDF distribution:

PDF files are widely used in internet to provide useful information such as press releases, tutorials, articles, guides etc. You can distribute the PDF of your articles with your links within PDF file. It's a very effective way to get referral traffic. Every time that PDF file will be read, reader may visit your website by clicking links provided in PDF file.

Software distribution:

You can create some small utility or an application and can submit this to various free download websites along with the description and link back to your website. People will download it and will flow towards your website from these download websites.

Tips to Make Google Friendly WebPage

Many publishers complain that Google does not index their pages fast or my pages do not rank high in Google or my new pages are not getting index at all. Here is the solution of all these problems. In this post, I am going to tell you 16 quick tips that will help to boost the rankings of your webpage in search engines.

• Keep the title of webpage not too long and not too short.
• The title of the webpage should be clean and reflect the contents of webpage.
• Your targeted keywords should appear in the title of your webpage.
• Keep your URL short, not too long
• Like title, keep your targeted keywords in URL.
• Give a proper META keywords and description tags to your webpage.
• Always keep META description relevant to the title and contents of your webpage.
• Avoid excessive use of keywords, also called keyword Stuffing in either title, URL or main text of your webpage. Refer the post.
• Make sure you did not copy existing contents in your webpage. It may led to Google penalization. Always provide unique contents in your webpage.
• Do a proper link building in your webpage. Link only with relevant WebPages or websites of yours or others.
• Do not put too many URL's in your webpage. Normally search engine leave the page which contains too many links.
• Keep away from any blackhat SEO technique in your webpage.
• Optimize images used in your webpage to let your webpage load faster.
• Add proper "alt" and "title" information to each and every image used in your webpage.
For Ex.-
• Keep less number of objects ( flash animations, video clips, music clips) in your webpage.
• Double check your webpage for any broken link before publishing it.

There are many other factors also involved to rank high on Google. The basic purpose of this post was to tell you the way you can build a Google friendly or you can say search engine friendly Webpage. These tips are applicable to all major search engines such as Yahoo, Live search and Ask.com search. Make sure you follow all these tips before writing your next post.

Tips to Become a Successful Blogger

I have seen in past that many people just start blogging on anything without a planning and ends with nothing. There is no success without proper planning until you are lucky enough. Here are few points I observed while writing for many years. These points should help new bloggers to do well in the field of blogging.

• What's your interest?
  This is the very first question you should ask to yourself while going to start writing. The best output will come with the subject you are most interested with. You will be able to do justice with the blog if you write about your interest. Blogging is not an easy job, you need to dig into it to get the best out of it. If something is of your interest, you will dig into it deeper and deeper and that will help you to become good in writing about it.

 What can you give to your readers?

• That's another very important question you should ask to yourself while entering into blogging. Readers visiting to your blog will be looking for something to take it with them. It could be a nice article, a nice tip, something new or interesting to download. You should always think of giving something to your readers. Each time you are going to write something, just think for a second that what I can give to my readers. This will help building a regular interest between your blog and blog readers.

• Can your writing create interest among readers?
  
  That's another point of concern while writing. You should focus on developing interest among your readers towards your blog. This helps in building long lasting relation between blog and its readers. If you are not able to bring interest to your readers, they will not come back to your blog. Revisit to your blog by any reader will depend on how well your writing is. With good writing you can indirectly force them to revisit your blog and they will happily revisit your blog if they found it interesting.

 Are you learning everyday?

• So you are all set for writing, you did some research about your interest, you know that you can give interesting writing to your readers. Now it’s time for learning. Yes, in every field you will find many successful people who has made his fortune with their sincere efforts, they have given something to the community and people know them for what they do. Your job is to learn the success mantras from such people every single day. More you learn, more you can offer to your readers. Learning is very important for reaching to top in your field.
   
   
• Are you focusing on your objectives?
  
  I am sure many of us have some objectives associated with the blogging. Some of us just write because writing is their interest and they just want to share good/bad things to rest of the world. There are people who has clear objective in their mind with respect to their blog. You have to focus more and more on your objectives with every other post you make on your blog. Clear focus will help you to achieve your objectives at the earliest.

You too can become a successful blogger. Just put sincere efforts towards your blog, don't try to make fool to your visitors. Provide the things what they are actually looking for. Build a never lasting relation with your readers.

5 Tips to Make Your Blogs or Websites Popular

Many webmaster ask this question to SEO experts that how to make my website or blog popular quickly. For them I would say that there is no shortcut of success. All you need is to be fair in whatever you do and have patience. You will see the positive results. In this post, i will explain few points, if followed can lead your website to big success.

Unique Contents:

The first and very important step to make your website a big hit is that you should provide unique contents. Never copy the contents from popular website in a hope that you will make your website popular very soon. There are advantages of providing unique contents. All big poplar websites will link back to you if your content is unique and have some importance for their users. More and more popular websites will start linking back to you. Your authority will increase. You will receive more backlinks and hence more Google PageRank value as well as more referral traffic.

Hold Your Visitors:

This is another art you should know. You can get traffic from many sources but if your website is not able to hold this traffic, your website is not able to turn this traffic to re- visitors, your website popularity will never increase. A website is popular because of re-visitors. If users feel that your website is worth visiting again, it's your win and sign of the popularity of your website.

Here are some points on how can you hold your visitors-

• Unique content will hold visitors.
• Website navigation should be easy. User should easily get what they are looking for.
• Never try to make your users fool by providing misleading information.
• Never distract your visitor from your website contents.
• Some kind of regular visitor participation like poll, survey, contest etc.
• Keep away your website from Spamming

Provide New Contents:

Update your contents frequently. Search engines like new contents. Fresh and unique contents will keep your SERP up and high SERP will turn into high traffic and hence more chances of your website to be popular. For a single service or product provider websites, they can focus more on quality of their services. Always try to keep your website search engine friendly in order to achieve high SERP.

Active participation in Related Niche:

Active participation in related niche websites, blogs to pull traffic as well as to put our website in front of users of other websites is required. More exposure your website will get, more likely users will come back to your website. The form of participation could be blog commenting, forum posting and article submission etc.

Social Bookmarking and Social Networking:

Social Networking and Social Bookmarking can bring good amount of traffic to your website and can give exposure to your website. Your next job is to convert this traffic to your regular visitors.

How to get backlinks for your blog or website

Backlink Definition:

Backlinks are those links that point to your website or webpage. For Example:- If i write a blog post and other webmasters find it useful. They will link back to my post in their blog and website.
The other terms for backlinks are incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links.

Backlink Usage:

Backlinks are very important in SEO(Search Engine Optimization). Backlink is very important factor to measure the popularity or importance of a website or webpage. Search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and others give much importance to backlinks. Baclinks can increase your web traffic from search engines as well as from referrals.

Backlink Tips:

1:-To increase the Google page rank of your website, try to get backlinks from high PR websites.

2:-Submit articles to directories to get backlinks. Article Submission is very effective way to get backlinks.

3:-Regular commenting on popular websites can help you to build backlinks.

4:-Submit your blog or website URL to free directories to get backlinks. You will find many free directories on internet with high PR.

5:-Social Netowrking and Social Bookmarking can bring you good amount of backlinks.

Drive Traffice-with Yahoo Search Engine

Yahoo!, the second largest search engine after Google is suppose to be the toughest search engine for webmasters to rank high. Yahoo! search algorithm is very different from Google and this is the reason, a website ranking good in Google may not rank well in Yahoo! In this post, I will explain few tips to get success with Yahoo!, tips to get good amount of traffic from Yahoo search engine. Tips to perform well on Yahoo for your keywords.

Your success with Yahoo is dependent on Yahoo itself. Yahoo provides various tools for webmasters in order to bring them good amount of traffic from Yahoo! search engine. In this post, we will explore all these tools in details.

Yahoo publisher network helps you to increase the reach of your website to new readers. Here is what you can do with Yahoo! publisher network.

• Submit your blog or website RSS feed to Yahoo!
• Allow other users to subscribe your RSS feed in their My Yahoo! pages using Add to MY Yahoo! button.
• Submit your website to Yahoo!
• Manage effectively your website with Yahoo! site explorer

Submit RSS feed to Yahoo! :

If you are not aware of RSS feed, refer to the post here. Once you have feed of your blog or website, you can take advantage of one of the world's most popular feed reader "My Yahoo!". Yahoo! has a large feed database and in order to have your website feed in their feed database, you should first login into Yahoo! using your Yahoo! login id and password. Once login, you can follow this page to submit your RSS feed to My Yahoo! page and Yahoo! feed database.

Once your feed is added, Yahoo! will do the rest. Depend on the frequency of your contents update on your website, Yahoo! will check your feed. You can also tell Yahoo! about your latest updates using Ping. The URL for the ping is-

http://ping.feeds.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u=[THE URL of your RSS feed].

In case, you are not aware of Ping, refer to the post here.

Add to MY Yahoo! :

Webmasters can have "Add to MY Yahoo!" button on their blog or website to let others subscribe the feed of your website in their "My Yahoo" webpage. Add to my Yahoo! button is very handy and comes in two style "Long button" and "short button with text" as given below.
You can click either of the button in order to add the RSS feed of my blog to your My Yahoo! page.

Submit your website to Yahoo :

Yahoo! provides you an option to tell to Yahoo! about your website or you can say a request to Yahoo! to include your website in their search engine. You can find it here http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html. In the above link, you will find Yahoo! search submission and Yahoo! directory submission. You can submit your website and website feed to Yahoo! for free.

Mange your website with Yahoo Site Explorer :

Yahoo site explorer gives you complete control over your website in Yahoo!. You can track the progress of your website with Yahoo! site explorer. You can see what all pages of your website are there in Yahoo! search index. You can track the internal and external links to your website. Most of the webmaster prefers backlinks calculations of Yahoo! than Google because it shows all your backlinks. If you are not aware of backlinks, refer to the post here.
You can submit and track the feed of your website in Yahoo! site explorer. You can delete the URL that you do not want Yahoo! to index.


If you want to drive traffic to your website from Yahoo!, follow all these steps in order to expose your website to Yahoo! and let Yahoo! throw thousands of readers to your website every day. Make your success with Yahoo!

Very recently Yahoo! launched a new look and feel for Yahoo Site Explorer. You can access it from http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/new

Drive Traffic to Your Blogs or Websites with Google, Yahoo! and Facebook Groups

In today's world, Social Networking plays an important role in the success and failure of any blog or website. It is as important as the content of your website. More social networking leads to more users/traffic for your website. In this article, I will explain how you can drive the traffic to your website or blog using Groups services from some of the top internet brands e.g. Google, Yahoo! and Facebook. Though there are other sites as well but we will talk about these only in this article.

Yahoo! Groups is the one who started its services a way before Google and Facebook and still the leader in its offerings. Google and Facebook groups too are trying to catch up Yahoo! very fast. For any website or blog, it is very important to interact with its users. Though the website itself provides the options like comments, ratings, poll etc. but apart from interaction in your website, you should also explore other platforms to interact with users who might be interested in your blog or website.

Yahoo! Groups: If you are a owner of a blog or website and you want to promote it and looking for more user interaction then you can start a new Yahoo! Group related to your website/blog. This group can be used to showcase the things about the topic of your website. E.g. If I own a site called nokia5800downloads.blogspot.com, i can create a Yahoo! group with name Nokia 5800 Downloads. Yahoo! Groups allows you to add new members, post articles, images, attachements, links, etc. You can create polls to interact with your group members. You can even promote your group using the tools provided by Yahoo! Groups.

Just add more and more users to your Yahoo! Group and talk about your blog/website. Yahoo! Groups is a powerful tool and it can drive good amout of traffic to your website. I have seen the groups with thousands of users. You can create a new Yahoo! Group by visiting the URL http://groups.yahoo.com/

Google Groups: Unlike Yahoo! Groups, Google Groups is very simple and offers you pretty much the same as Yahoo! Groups. You can add members, create pages, add links, photos and files. You have discussions where you can post about your website and let users of the group interact with you on the topic of discussion. The interface is very simple and it's very easy for first time users as well.

You can create a Google Group by visiting the URL http://groups.google.com/. You can add a link of your group to your website so that a visitor coming to your website can join the group and later you can keep informing him about any latest updates of your website through this group.

Facebook Groups: After Google and Yahoo!, Facebook too has Facebook Groups, a service which helps you connect and share with the people interested in your website or blog. If you have a Facebook account, creating and running a group is as easy as opening a webpage. Fill the few information like your Group name, the category it belongs to and a little description and there you go. You have your Facebook Groups created. Unlike Yahoo! and Google Groups, Facebook Groups is very advanced. You can add links, images, videos in a second with the cool interface it provides. You can set an event, start a discussion. You can even promote your Facebook Group.

You can invite people to join your group. There are plenty of ways provided in the interface to interact with the members of your group. Facebook Groups is the best offerings in terms of interface and functionalities.