Track 404 Errors on your Website with Google Analytics

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFeAcS6gK7fQnBSeFAI_r83qd_1v8iaNfhsN8I1nOm-DI2Nos2Diai67CE9bcxl5Iq7CCngU0M1hH0CBkj7zXXVJxM6j-HQq9YtGza-MiUdoKx8q4aECC2eZgkB9KGKfnHSRDLfgTVmRU/s1600/1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFeAcS6gK7fQnBSeFAI_r83qd_1v8iaNfhsN8I1nOm-DI2Nos2Diai67CE9bcxl5Iq7CCngU0M1hH0CBkj7zXXVJxM6j-HQq9YtGza-MiUdoKx8q4aECC2eZgkB9KGKfnHSRDLfgTVmRU/s1600/1.JPG" /></a></div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 17.3333339691162px; line-height: 27.1823978424072px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 17.3333339691162px; line-height: 27.1823978424072px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 17.3333339691162px; line-height: 27.1823978424072px;">If you change the URL of an existing page on your website, or delete it completely, visitors will get a 404 or “File Not Found” error when they try to access that page. The other reason why you have end up having 404 pages on your site is not in your control. Say your page URL is abc.com/xyz and another site links to that page but with a wrong URL, visitors will get a 404 when they click that link.</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 17.3333339691162px; line-height: 27.1823978424072px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 17.3333339691162px; line-height: 27.1823978424072px;">It is important that you fix your 404 errors are they offer a bad visitor experience and your site may also lose Google juice. Google gives you points for every incoming link but the benefit is lost if that link is pointing to a non-existent 404 page.</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 17.3333339691162px; line-height: 27.1823978424072px;"><br /></span><h2 style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 2em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.25; margin: 20px 0px 0.809em; padding: 0px;">Track the Missing 404 Pages on your Site</h2><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px;">If you are using Google Analytics, which you most likely are, you can use the same service to easily keep a track of all the 404 missing pages on your website. Let me show you how:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://img.labnol.org/di/404_errors.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://img.labnol.org/di/404_errors.png" /></a></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 17.3333339691162px; line-height: 27.1823978424072px;">You take your standard Analytics tracking code, the one that is already on your web pages, and add a few extra lines inside the script tag that will enable tracking for 404s. The modified code will generate a virtual pageview in your Analytics reports (see the above screenshot) that will not only provide you with the URL of the missing page on your website but also the URL of the referring site.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFMUBAulbb5SjQHjPM4B3WoEMKm7nkg6D0lNMU6H8CyQAzhkDC7r2sH8ttNeCOuWuXqY5SRS7c9kc68DVr9J2KQxvSyvZSiW6I_lfZPMF-_x7U_bm-vhkdO16Cr4dxa11hm4zgcDHfYzA/s1600/1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFMUBAulbb5SjQHjPM4B3WoEMKm7nkg6D0lNMU6H8CyQAzhkDC7r2sH8ttNeCOuWuXqY5SRS7c9kc68DVr9J2KQxvSyvZSiW6I_lfZPMF-_x7U_bm-vhkdO16Cr4dxa11hm4zgcDHfYzA/s1600/1.JPG" /></a></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 16.3636360168457px; line-height: 1.618em;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 16.3636360168457px; line-height: 1.618em;">Please </span><b style="font-size: 16.3636360168457px; line-height: 1.618em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">note</b><span style="font-size: 16.3636360168457px; line-height: 1.618em;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16.3636360168457px; line-height: 1.618em;">that this code should only be added to your</span><span style="font-size: 16.3636360168457px; line-height: 1.618em;"> </span><a href="http://ctrlq.org/code/19934-404-page-for-wordpress" style="color: black; font-size: 16.3636360168457px; line-height: 1.618em; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">404 template</a><span style="font-size: 16.3636360168457px; line-height: 1.618em;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16.3636360168457px; line-height: 1.618em;">and not every page.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 16.3636360168457px; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px;">To get a report of all the 404 pages on your site, go to your Google Analytics dashboard and choose Behaviour -> Site Content -> All Pages. Here select any date range and put /404 in the search box and you’ll know what’s missing from your site.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 16.3636360168457px; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px;">Also, since Google Analytics now offer near real time tracking, you’ll know about the 404 pages on your website as they happen.</div><h3 style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 1.75em; font-weight: 300; line-height: 1.25; margin: 20px 0px 0.809em; padding: 0px;">Find 404 Pages in Webmaster Tools</h3><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 16.3636360168457px; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px;">If you are not using Google Analytics, or if you do not have to option to modify the code in your web pages, you can use <a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Google Webmaster</a> tools to find the 404 pages on your website. Once you have added and verified your site with the Google Webmaster panel, go to Dashboard –> Diagnostics –> Crawl Errors and select the “Not found” option.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://img.labnol.org/di/google_404.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://img.labnol.org/di/google_404.png" /></a></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 16.3636360168457px; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 16.3636360168457px; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 16.3636360168457px; line-height: 27.1823978424072px;">Here you’ll see a list of all pages that returned a 404 status code to Google while it was trying to index your site. The tool may not catch every single missing page of your site but, as </span><a href="http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/free-direct-text-links/" style="color: black; font-size: 16.3636360168457px; line-height: 27.1823978424072px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Matt Cutts</a><span style="font-size: 16.3636360168457px; line-height: 27.1823978424072px;"> remarked, “the vast majority of the backlinks you’d care about, at least as far as Google is concerned.”</span></div><div style="background-color: white; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 16.3636360168457px; line-height: 27.1823978424072px;">Source: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; line-height: 27.1823978424072px;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif;">http://www.labnol.org/</span></span></div>

Track 404 Errors on your Website with Google Analytics

If you change the URL of an existing page on your website, or delete it completely, visitors will get a 404 or “File Not Found” error when t...

Read more »

How to Write a Successful Blog

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl40oa96lVxwQisIjR4cP0c-xaWbrb-AZmb6-YekRp295CtuMBin8sHS8ZPD5Y-aYDLAyhlydjZpnrhcaE8rYZLeu98SCLrYGMR1Fq3e8Ye1t2Q9hF8Rs7GaXpDO3UXB0I_GOYC23DoI8/s1600/1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl40oa96lVxwQisIjR4cP0c-xaWbrb-AZmb6-YekRp295CtuMBin8sHS8ZPD5Y-aYDLAyhlydjZpnrhcaE8rYZLeu98SCLrYGMR1Fq3e8Ye1t2Q9hF8Rs7GaXpDO3UXB0I_GOYC23DoI8/s1600/1.JPG" /></a></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em;">Here I share some of my learnings and blogging tips that will probably help take your blog to the next level. The </span><a href="http://img.labnol.org/videos/blogging-tips.mp4" style="color: black; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">video</a><span style="font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em;"> is also available on</span><span style="font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em;"> </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hX_rznqnM0" style="color: black; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">YouTube</a><span style="font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em;">.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">1.</strong> If you are on Blogger or Tumblr or another blogging platform, do your blog a favor and <a href="http://www.labnol.org/internet/switch-from-blogger-to-wordpress/9707/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">move to WordPress</a>. The process isn’t complicated and will definitely help you in the long run, especially from the search perspective. Blogger is powerful and easy-to-use but the big drawback is that it blocks everything from bots that’s not a post. The other concern is that Blogger is a Google product and they have killed products mercilessly in the past even when they had a substantial user base. Remember Google Reader?</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">2.</strong> They say content is king but other than content, you need to develop a good and interesting writing style to attract a global audience. Good writing is a gift that comes naturally to some of us but if you happen to be in the other half, get some books.  <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/020530902X/ctrlqorg-20/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">The Elements of Style</a>,  Stephen King’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1439156816/ctrlqorg-20/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">On Writing</a>, and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060891548/ctrlqorg-20/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">On Writing Well</a> offer good advice on writing. Compose the drafts in a proper editor – use Word, Google Docs or <a href="https://poetica.com/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Poetica</a>– they will highlight all the typos and grammatical errors that otherwise convey a bad impression. You can also get a style guide from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/081296389X/ctrlqorg-20/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">The New York Times</a> or the<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465082998/ctrlqorg-20/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Associated Press</a> and they’ll help you develop a consistent writing style. These guides have accepted writing rules for journalism and you can apply them to your own writing style as well.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">3.</strong> Do not imitate someone’s style. You have your own personal style and your readers are following you because they love your style. You need not imitate someone nor you have to write as if you are writing for a news agency. Make your writing personal.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">4.</strong> The most important part of a blog post is the headline and suddenly everyone is trying to do Buzzfeed style headlines. “This is why the Apple watch is not round.”  “You’ll never believe what Facebook will unveil next.” With such headlines, you raise the expectation level of the audience and when they read the actual article, they are often disappointed. Go for boring headlines that may not be cute or clever but accurate. Your readers should be able to guess what the article is all about by looking at the headline itself.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">Also see: <a href="http://www.labnol.org/internet/create-good-web-content/21101/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Create Good and Effective Web Content</a></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">5.</strong> There’s lot of noise in the blogging world and there’s a mad rush to report something new. Take a step back back and think – are you really adding any value or just contributing to the echo chamber? It is probably the job of the mainstream blogs to publish news as it happens but for the rest of us, blog only when you have something interesting to say. You won’t lose much if you aren’t among the first few to report something.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">6.</strong> Just say no to guest blogging. Yes, it would help raise your profile if you manage to write for a reputed and authoritative site but 99% of the guest blogging is done with the sole purpose of gaining links and that’s just waste effort. Also, as your website grows popular, you’ll find the big sites approaching you to for permission to republish your stuff. They will promise you eyeballs in return for your content but that won’t actually happen – people will just read your content on their site and move.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">7.</strong> Always use a good images or screenshots with your blog posts. This helps for two reasons – one, when people share your content on social sites, your story may stand out in the crowded news feed because of that image thumbnail. You can use images to draw the visitor’s attention to any part on the story that you want to emphasize and if you are articles are long, images can work as visual breakpoints. And it goes with saying that you should only use <a href="http://www.labnol.org/internet/find-free-images/24990/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">free images</a> that are in the public domain or under<a href="http://www.labnol.org/internet/creative-commons-license-rules/14208/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Creative Commons</a>.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">8.</strong> Search is definitely import but none of us really know how Google works. They have 200+ factors that decide the ranks of pages and we only know about a few of them. The fact is as long as long as you have the basics right, the cream will automatically rise to the top. Here are a few things that I would suggest as far as SEO is concerned.</div><ol style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.3999996185303px; margin: 1em 0px 1.4em 24px; padding: 0px;"><li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">Read the webmaster guidelines from <a href="https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Google</a> and <a href="http://www.bing.com/webmaster/help/webmaster-guidelines-30fba23a" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Bing</a> to know the do’s and don’ts for SEO. Follow the refresher course at <a href="http://g.co/webmasteracademy" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Webmaster Academy</a> and then read this<a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">starter guide</a> (PDF) from Google.</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">Have an HTML sitemap so that all your pages are no more than 2-3 levels deep from the homepage.</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">When writing blog posts, always organize your content under sub-headings, use anchored headings (similar to Wikipedia) and your images should have <a href="http://www.labnol.org/internet/using-alt-img-attributes-in-image-tags/5450/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">titles and captions</a>.</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">Interlink your content so both human visitors and search bots can find the gold hiding in your archives.</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">The post excerpt is important because it will also show up in the search snippets and social sites where your articles will be shared. Do no auto-generate the excerpt, write it on your own.</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">Keep track of all the missing resources on your website (<a href="http://www.labnol.org/internet/track-404-error-pages/13509/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">404 errors</a>) and either fix them or redirect them to something related on your site. Xenu is a good tool to find outdated links on your website.</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">Use breadcrumb menus because that will help the search bots understand the organization of content on your site.</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">Focus on typography because the reading experience matters. You can use Google Fonts like Open Sans and Roboto that look good on both mobile and desktops.</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">Any page on your site has two parts – the main content (your article) and common content (sidebar, navigation, footer area, etc). As far as possible, the main content should be above any common content in the HTML source.</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">Make sure that your web design is <a href="http://www.labnol.org/internet/responsive-web-design-faq/21361/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">responsive</a> and that your site passes the <a href="http://www.labnol.org/internet/test-mobile-friendly-website/20330/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">mobile-friendly test</a>. Work on improving your site speed score, load ads asynchronously and remove all the bells and whistles (like JavaScript widgets) from your pages. See:<a href="http://www.labnol.org/internet/wordpress-optimization-guide/3931/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Optimize your WordPress</a>.</li></ol><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">9.</strong> Do not use an RSS to Email service to prepare your daily / weekly email newsletters. Instead, spend some time and create your email newsletters manually. Alway put a summary in the email subject – this will vastly improve the open rate of your email newsletter.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">10.</strong> Think of the reader first and the revenue later. Advertising is important but if you only focus on the commercials, it will be difficult to build a loyal audience. AdSense, BuySellAds, BlogAds are good <a href="http://digitalinspiration.com/ad-networks" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">ad networks</a> but stay away from the networks that allow <a href="https://twitter.com/kawaljit/status/486035750849216512" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">scam ads</a>. Remember, you are responsible for what ads are shown to visitors on your website.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">Also see: <a href="http://www.labnol.org/internet/make-money-online/18293/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">How Bloggers Make Money on the Internet</a></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">11.</strong> Good and useful content will spread on its own but, occasionally, you can also pitch other bloggers in your niche. The other set of people who you can help spread the word are your blog commentators and people who have previously shared your stories on social sites. They love your blog and will happily evangelize your content.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">12.</strong> Your “about” page is your chance to convert a new visitor into a regular one. Show off your best stuff,  link to your popular stories, make it easy for people to subscribe to your content and include mentions in the mainstream media – this will make your bio more credible to someone who doesn’t know you.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">13.</strong> Lists, or listicles as they are better known in the world of blogging, are the easiest way to generate traffic. They are easier to scan and hence people enjoy reading them. Lists are easier to create too but if all you do is publish lists based blog posts, that may have an opposite effect.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">14.</strong> This is your personal preference but I suggest you keep updating your old articles so that they stay relevant and up to date. If something is useless, it can be  removed permanently. For instance, I had a few Orkut related posts on my blog. They were relevant when I wrote them but now that Orkut is gone, I got rid of them and directed all the juice to something related but more relevant.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">15.</strong> Google is no longer sharing the search queries with you but the internal search data, that you can grab from Google Analytics and <a href="http://www.labnol.org/internet/google-custom-search-css/28360/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Google Custom Search</a>, will help you understand what kind of solutions are people looking for on your website. You can then go a step further. Use the annotations feature of CSE to automatically highlight important pages in your internal search results.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">16.</strong> If you are new, you can attract attention of other website owners by linking to them – your blog posts will show up in their traffic logs, they may check out your blog and help spread the word among their audience. Like the <a href="http://www.labnol.org/internet/love-bbc-news-website/13303/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">BBC</a>, You can also add depth to your posts by linking to other sites that have written on the same topic but may have a different perspective. A web page that cites source and links to research may also be seen as more authoritative and trustworthy by search engines.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">17.</strong> Page views give an ego boost the more important metrics are the returning visitor count, the bounce rate and the amount of time that people are spending on individual pages. If they are landing on a page and leaving in a split-second, you should to diagnose the reason – maybe they aren’t finding the information on the page, maybe the title does not accurately tell what the page is all about, maybe your site is slow or the typography is to be blamed.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">18.</strong> Plagiarism is  a problem and will continue to be. You can get the <a href="http://labnol.blogspot.in/2006/07/dealing-with-website-plagiarism-when.html" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">content removed</a> through DMCA but, unless a popular site has done it, I would not worry too much about plagiarism. Instead, that energy can be focussed on creating more content.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">19.</strong> In all these years, I have tried to harness various channels and I think that also helped in the growth of the blog. I have written an ebook for the Kindle, I have a YouTube channel, I do a podcast on iTunes which is essentially my YouTube videos in downloadable format, I curate on Flipboard, I upload my slides on Slideshare and have <a href="http://www.labnol.org/software/create-chrome-apps-extensions/27958/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Chrome apps</a> for the blog. Only a few hundred thousand people probably know about my website but these channels are known to millions of Internet users. It thus helps to have a presence there.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">20.</strong> Everyone can have a blog but what separates you other blogs is your expertise in the field, your writing skills and most important credibility. The editorial should be complete separate from the business side of the blog. Be transparent and abide by the journalists code of ethics, much like the team at <a href="https://www.theverge.com/ethics-statement" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">The Verge</a> and <a href="https://recode.net/ajax/writerinfo/ethics/walt-mossberg/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">ReCode</a>.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;">Source: http://www.labnol.org/</div>

How to Write a Successful Blog

Here I share some of my learnings and blogging tips that will probably help take your blog to the next level. The  video  is also available ...

Read more »

Use Google Maps as a Background of your Webpage

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.iiap.res.in/files/google-map1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="318" src="http://www.iiap.res.in/files/google-map1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 17px; line-height: 27.1823978424072px;">This is a demo of </span><a href="http://img.labnol.org/files/google-maps-form.html" style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 17px; line-height: 27.1823978424072px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">contact form</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 17px; line-height: 27.1823978424072px;"> that embeds a Google Map in the background. It isn’t using a static screenshot image of Google Maps in the background but the map is an interactive one — you can zoom in and out, drag the Pegman to turn on street view or even toggle between the Satellite view and the Maps view.</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 17px; line-height: 27.1823978424072px;"><br /></span><br /><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px;">There are basically two layers on the page – one is the map and the other is the form – and we are using the z-index property of CSS to define the stack order. The form has a higher z-index than Google Maps and thus the latter appears in the background. Let’s look at the actual code now.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The HTML</strong> — There are two DIV elements – the map will render inside the element with ID #googlemaps while everything that you add inside #contactform will show up in your form. You can even embed a <a href="http://www.labnol.org/tag/google-forms/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Google Form</a> here.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlhxcJV2Epojbhcw9KIvVFfyEroyvm_oKd0f9DPwVcmaZOdQ4RUPrKc3W5IBgjzCkUPeKRl1UvjiSTzXHDGzOXbJ8wnGIr3PmAoEmk4zK2iEr5mNi2LwrFMV8pjf0oiQGVcefMl1SP5KM/s1600/1.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlhxcJV2Epojbhcw9KIvVFfyEroyvm_oKd0f9DPwVcmaZOdQ4RUPrKc3W5IBgjzCkUPeKRl1UvjiSTzXHDGzOXbJ8wnGIr3PmAoEmk4zK2iEr5mNi2LwrFMV8pjf0oiQGVcefMl1SP5KM/s1600/1.PNG" /></a></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px;"><strong style="font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 27.1823978424072px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The CSS</strong><span style="font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 27.1823978424072px;"> — The #googlemaps element occupies the entire height and width of the page while the #contactform has a fixed width. You can also change the opacity level of #contactform to make your forms slightly transparent.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ6FqX2lTp9YEh4Qhs-AOgZD5dA5Xy0yjjitjgACmJ21QjsY5vZAUNcpK__py4dsh3j4lxaq3mSc5U2V8ih88yd9ilmcUBeWXsEGsXukzog-S05HnQ_okZuN7W2nBpNFNGpEezutMJ66E/s1600/1.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ6FqX2lTp9YEh4Qhs-AOgZD5dA5Xy0yjjitjgACmJ21QjsY5vZAUNcpK__py4dsh3j4lxaq3mSc5U2V8ih88yd9ilmcUBeWXsEGsXukzog-S05HnQ_okZuN7W2nBpNFNGpEezutMJ66E/s1600/1.PNG" /></a></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px;"><strong style="font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 27.1823978424072px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The JavaScript</strong><span style="font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 27.1823978424072px;"> — Find the </span><a href="http://www.labnol.org/internet/tools/find-latitude-longitude-from-address-google-maps/1691/" style="color: black; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 27.1823978424072px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">latitude and longitude</a><span style="font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 27.1823978424072px;"> of your place and replace the co-ordinates in line #7. You can then copy-paste the modified JavaScript code in the footer of your HTML page.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghZTK38oTTIWGoAd6NqtBjWTIY0OkFoSxc8LIhlxmoEjo8JRqlx2QHtpGtKCzZ1RofdZRnoo24a0zAz4l_xlpHrknl5Za-gCSJsd_RfmvW_mRKLkO8YrvZSq1OmP00LESkMVk3MsNQp1U/s1600/1.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghZTK38oTTIWGoAd6NqtBjWTIY0OkFoSxc8LIhlxmoEjo8JRqlx2QHtpGtKCzZ1RofdZRnoo24a0zAz4l_xlpHrknl5Za-gCSJsd_RfmvW_mRKLkO8YrvZSq1OmP00LESkMVk3MsNQp1U/s1600/1.PNG" /></a></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 27.1823978424072px;">You may refer to the HTML source of this </span><a href="http://img.labnol.org/files/google-maps-form.html" style="color: black; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 27.1823978424072px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">contact form</a><span style="font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 27.1823978424072px;"> for a complete example.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 27.1823978424072px;">Source: www.labnol.org</span></div>

Use Google Maps as a Background of your Webpage

This is a demo of  contact form  that embeds a Google Map in the background. It isn’t using a static screenshot image of Google Maps in the ...

Read more »

The Best Online Tools To Know Everything About a Website

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.enginebuildermag.com/wp-content/uploads/Web-Design-Tools.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.enginebuildermag.com/wp-content/uploads/Web-Design-Tools.jpg" /></a></div><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 17px; line-height: 27.1823978424072px;">How do I contact the owner of a website? Where is a particular website hosted? What other websites are hosted on that same server ? Is the site using WordPress or the Drupal platform? What ad networks are they using to monetize a site? Is the site accessible from China?</span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 17px; line-height: 27.1823978424072px;"><br /></span><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.05em; line-height: 1.618em; margin-bottom: 1.618em; padding: 0px;">Here are some of the most useful online tools that will help you know each and every detail of any website. Let’s get started.</div><ul style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.3999996185303px; margin: 1em 0px 1.4em 24px; padding: 0px;"><li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://cloudmonitor.ca.com/en/ping.php" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">just-ping.com</strong></a> — Use Just Ping to determine if a particular website or blog is accessible from other countries. Unlike other online ping services that have service in a couple of locations, Just Ping has 30 monitoring stations across the world including Turkey, Egypt and China. If the ping results say 100% Packet Loss, most likely the site is inaccessible from that region.</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://who.is/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">who.is</strong></a> — If you like to know the contact address, email and phone number of the website owner, this free whois lookup service will help. This is a universal lookup service meaning it can simultaneously query the whois database of all popular domain registrars.</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://whoishostingthis.com/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">whoishostingthis.com</strong></a> — Enter the URL of any website and this online service will show you the name of the company where that website is hosted. This may come handl if you need the contact information of the web hosting provider for writing a<a href="http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/09/dmca-notice-of-copyright-infringement.html" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">DMCA Notice</a> or if you are looking to switch web hosts.</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://www.popuri.us/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">popuri.us</strong></a> — You can use popuri to estimate the relative popularity of a website on social sites like Twitter, Google+ and Facebook. It also display the Google Pagerank of a website and the <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Web of Trust</em> matrix.</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://www.chillingeffects.org/copyright/search.cgi" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">chillingeffects.org</a></strong> — When there’s a copyright related complaint against a website, a copy of that letter is archived in the Chilling Effects database. Anyone can query this public database to know about all the copyright infringement complaints against a particular website.</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://myip.ms/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">myip.ms</a></strong> — MyIP.ms offers a comprehensive report of any website or I.P. Address. You get to know about the hosting provider, the physical location of a website, the IP Address change history of a website and the DNS information. <a href="http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=labnol.org" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Netcraft</a> also offers similar reports.</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://www.ewhois.com/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">ewhois.com</a></strong> — Ewhois, short for enhanced whois lookup, will help you determine other <a href="http://www.labnol.org/internet/find-websites-of-someone/20550/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">websites of someone</a>. It looks the whois details, the AdSense publisher ID and the Google Analytics code of websites to figure out other web domain that may belong to the same owner. <a href="http://www.ewhois.com/labnol.org/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">See example</a>.</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://builtwith.com/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">builtwith.com</strong></a> — Use BuiltWith to know the technology stack of any website. It helps you figure out the mail service provider of a domain, the advertising partners, the tracking widgets that are installed on a website and whether the site is using any CDN like <a href="http://www.labnol.org/tag/amazon-s3/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">Amazon S3</a> or Google Cloud. <a href="http://builtwith.com/labnol.org" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">See example</a>.</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://semrush.com/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">semrush.com</strong></a> — If you wish to analyze your competitor’s website, this is tool to go with. SEMrush will help you figure what organic keywords are people using to find a website, what is the <a href="http://www.labnol.org/internet/find-website-traffic-hits/8008/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">site’s traffic</a> and which are the competing websites. <a href="http://www.semrush.com/info/labnol.org" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">See example</a>.</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://www.whatsmydns.net/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">whatsmydns.net</strong></a> — When you buy a new domain or switch from one host to another, the DNS records for the domain change and it may take a while to propagate these changes worldwide. WhatsMyDNS check your DNS records from various locations and it can check your domain’s A, CNAME and <a href="http://www.labnol.org/software/verify-email-address/18220/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">MX records</a>.</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://modern.ie/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">modern.ie</strong></a> — This online app will help test your website’s compatibility with various web browsers and detects coding errors that might cause problems. The site is integrated with <a href="http://www.browserstack.com/screenshots" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">BrowserStack</a> so you can quickly know how your site looks on different devices and browsers.</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">developers.google.com</strong></a> — Find the Page Speed score of any website on both desktop and mobile devices. The higher this number, the better. The Google tool also offers suggestion on how the score can be improved.</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://ctrlq.org/sandbox/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">ctrlq.org/sandbox</strong></a> — – The AdSense sandbox solves two problems – it shows the various advertisers that are targeting a website and it will also help you figure out if a particular web domain is banned in the AdSense network or not.</li><li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://httparchive.org/websites.php" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">httparchive.org</strong></a> — The HTTP Archive is a repository of all performance related metrics for a website. It keeps a record of the size of pages, their average load time and the number of failed requests (missing resources) over time. <a href="http://httparchive.org/viewsite.php?u=http%3A//www.labnol.org/" style="color: black; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;">See example</a>.</li></ul><div><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif;"><span style="line-height: 22.3999996185303px;">Source: www.labnol.org</span></span></div>

The Best Online Tools To Know Everything About a Website

How do I contact the owner of a website? Where is a particular website hosted? What other websites are hosted on that same server ? Is the s...

Read more »

Adobe PDF Guide – Everything You Wanted to do with PDFs

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSGuAJxP-YxOnocF1q46onpNK-yNo9-luX29SkR5fYiRcOPdmxYTQ" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSGuAJxP-YxOnocF1q46onpNK-yNo9-luX29SkR5fYiRcOPdmxYTQ" /></a></div><br />Adobe PDF is probably the best format for sharing documents as the layout and formatting is preserved across all platforms, the documents are read-only and also because most computers and mobile devices can easily open PDF files.<br /><br /> This guide shares a host of useful things you can do with the PDF file format with the help of software tools and web apps that don’t cost a penny. You can edit PDF files (no Adobe Acrobat required), combine multiple PDFs as one, extract pages from PDFs and so much more. Let’s get started.<br /><br /><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: large;"> The Best PDF Tools & Apps</span></span><br /><h4><em>1.</em> How do I create PDF documents without Adobe Acrobat?</h4>You can use Google Chrome to print web pages as PDFs (<a href="http://www.labnol.org/software/save-web-page-as-pdf/21153/">see how-to</a>) without any extensions. Mac OS has PDF printing capabilities built-in while Windows users can install a virtual PDF printer like <a href="http://www.labnol.org/software/free-pdf-writer-reader/17915/" target="_blank">Nitro Reader</a> to create PDF files from any Windows application using the regular Print command – just choose Nitro from the list of available printers.<br /><a href="http://www.saveaswwf.com/en/home.html">SaveAsWWF</a> from WWF is another PDF printer that creates <a href="http://www.labnol.org/software/printless-pdf-for-windows/18398/">printless PDFs</a>. The other popular alternative is <a href="http://www.bullzip.com/products/pdf/info.php">BullZip</a> for Windows.<br /><h4><em>2.</em> I don’t want to install any software. Are there any web apps for converting a bunch of documents to PDFs?</h4>Sure. You can upload your documents to Google Drive and then export them as PDF files using these <a href="http://www.labnol.org/internet/direct-links-for-google-drive/28356/">special links</a>. Alternatively, you can email the documents to <em>attachconvert@pdfconvert.me</em> and perform the <a href="http://www.labnol.org/internet/convert-email-pdf/28330/">conversion by email</a>. The latter options comes handy when you need to convert documents to PDFs on a mobile phone without any apps.<br /><h4><em>3.</em> How do I convert a PDF file to another format like Word or HTML?</h4>Upload the PDF document to <a href="http://www.zamzar.com/" target="_blank">zamzar.com</a> and you’ll be able to the convert the file to other formats like doc, html, text, and more. Or you can use your Gmail account to <a href="http://labnol.blogspot.com/2005/12/convert-doc-xls-ppt-rtf-pdf-to-html.html">convert PDF to HTML</a>.<br /><h4><em>4.</em> Someone sent me a PDF document in Chinese. How do I translate the PDF into English?</h4>You can easily <a href="http://www.labnol.org/internet/tools/translate-pdf-word-documents-online-google-translate/3553/">translate PDF</a> files from one language to another using Google Translate. Go to <a href="https://translate.google.com/?tr=f&hl=en">translate.google.com</a>, upload the PDF file, choose the destination language and hit the Translate button. The document text is translated though the formatting won’t be preserved.<br /><h4><em>5.</em> How do I edit a PDF document?</h4>PDF files are essentially read-only documents but there are workarounds to help you <a href="http://www.labnol.org/software/edit-pdf-files/10870/">edit PDF files</a>.<br /><h4><em>6.</em> What is the easiest way to extract text from a scanned PDF document and use it in a Word document?</h4>You can easily extract text from regular PDFs using the text selection tool in Adobe Reader but for scanned PDFs, <a href="http://www.labnol.org/internet/perform-ocr-with-google-docs/10059/" target="_blank">Google Docs OCR</a> is a good choice. Upload the scanned PDF document to Google Docs, select the option that says “Convert text from PDF and image files to Google documents” and then choose File – Download as Word to save the extracted text.<br />Alternatively, you can download <a href="http://www.paperfile.net/download.html">FreeOCR</a>, a Windows-only app for extracting text from PDFs.<br /><h4><em>7.</em> How do I merge two or more PDF files into one? Can I also change the page order in the PDF?</h4>You should use <a href="http://www.download.com/PDFill-PDF-Tools-Free/3000-2075_4-10435051.html">PDF Fill</a>, a versatile PDF editing tool that lets you combine multiple PDF files into one. PDF Fill can also be used for rearranging pages of a PDF file or for rotating pages – a handy option for fixing the orientation of scanned PDFs. And if you prefer online apps, a good option is <a href="https://pdfmerge.w69b.com/">PDF Mergy</a>.<br /><h4><em>8.</em> I have a restricted PDF document that neither allows printing nor can I select text from the PDF. Can these restrictions be removed?</h4>You can use online services like <a href="http://www.pdfunlock.com/">PDFUnlock.com</a> or <a href="http://www.freemypdf.com/">freemyPDF.com</a> to remove all common restrictions around a PDF file – such as print, copying, etc. – without requiring any passwords.<br /><h4><em>9.</em> Some PDF files on our intranet are password-protected and the employee who created those PDFs is no longer with the company. How can we open these PDFs?</h4>There are several workarounds to help you <a href="http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/01/how-to-open-password-protected-pdf.html">open password protected PDFs</a>. The PDF Unlocker app from <a href="http://appnimi.com/apps/mac-os/viewdownload/2-windows/2-appnimi-pdf-unlocker">AppNimi.com</a> tries to guess passwords for your PDF using the Brute Force algorithm.<br />Alternatively, you can completely <a href="http://www.labnol.org/software/remove-pdf-password/20017/" target="_blank">remove passwords</a> from PDF files that are frequently viewed and instead place these files inside a <a href="http://www.labnol.org/software/password-protect-folders-files/14323/">password-protected folder</a> of your computer.<br /><h4><em>10.</em> How can I apply annotations or add text notes to my PDF documents?</h4>You can use the free Adobe Reader app, available for both Mac and Windows, to annotate and comment inside PDF files. Go to the View menu and choose Annotations under the Comments menu. The toolbox has tools for highlighting text, you can add text blocks, create freehand drawings or even add sticky notes to the document.<br />Alternatively, use <a href="http://www.pdfescape.com/open/">PDF Escape</a> to add annotations, call-outs and text to your PDFs online in the browser without requiring any software.<br /><h4><em>11.</em> How can I fill PDF forms online without Adobe Reader?</h4>Go to <a href="http://www.pdffiller.com/">PDF Filler</a>, upload the PDF form and start typing. You can even pull PDF forms from your Dropbox or Google Drive.<br />PDF Filler will convert your PDF form into images and the user can type right on top of these images. When you have filled the form and are ready to print, the images and user text are combined into a single image. The other good option is <a href="https://www.fillanypdf.com/">FillanyPDF.com</a> that is free as well.<br /><h4><em>12.</em> How can I add watermarks or even my signature to a PDF document?</h4>First draw your signature in Paint (or other photo editing tool) and save it as an image. Now open Adobe Reader and choose Tools – > Place Signature. Copy-paste that signature image anywhere on the PDF page. You can use the same technique to insert watermarks inside the PDF.<br />If you are on a Mac, open the PDF file inside the Preview app and choose Tools – Annotate – Signature – Create Signature from Facetime Camera. Sign your name in blank ink on a piece of white paper, hold the paper up to your webcam to scan the signature and you can then place it anywhere in the PDF.<br /><h4><em>13.</em> I have a PDF ebook that contains 200+ pages. Is there a way to extract selected pages from the PDF and save it as another smaller PDF?</h4>You can use the free <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfsam/">PDF SAM</a> (split and merge) utility to extract one or more pages from a PDF document and save them as separate PDFs. The tool, available for both Mac and Windows, can also be used to merge multiple PDFs into one file.<br /><h4><em>14.</em> How can I protect my PDF documents with a password?</h4>Upload the PDF file to <a href="http://www.pdfprotect.net/">pdfprotect.net</a>, set a security password and export it as PDF again. The service can be used to password-protect files up to 10 MB in size.<br /><h4><em>15.</em> How do I embed PDF files on my blog?</h4>You have several options. Upload the PDF file to Google Docs and then <a href="http://www.labnol.org/internet/how-to-embed-in-html-webpages/6365/">embed</a> it in your web pages using the <a href="http://www.labnol.org/internet/read-powerpoint-and-pdf-online/9992/">Google Docs Viewer</a>. Alternatively, upload the PDF to document hosting sites like Issuu, Scribd or SlideShare and use their Flash based viewer for embedding PDF into your web pages.<br /><br />Source: www.labnol.org<br /><br />

Adobe PDF Guide – Everything You Wanted to do with PDFs

Adobe PDF is probably the best format for sharing documents as the layout and formatting is preserved across all platforms, the documents ...

Read more »